The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 11

IT TAKES LESS THAN A week to realise that even compared to those miserable months after Suus was taken by the Hierarchy, life among the tombs and grey rocky clefts of Qabr should be as grim as any I have yet lived.

The first couple of days are the hardest. Bitterly cold nights fade to waking in a musty blackness that is panicking in its totality. First breaths always the hardest as my lungs remember the impurity of the air. The sarcophagi of the tombs are our beds, cut stone softened only by what we are wearing. During the second day, I learn from Caeror that most of the Qabrans remove the dead and sleep inside the sarcophagi themselves, using tattered body wrappings as bedding and detritus from the sepulchres to form makeshift coverings. I think it’s macabre. On the third night, I reluctantly try it myself. It’s significantly warmer. I sleep that way thereafter.

Dawn in the massive crypt comes well into the day, when the miserly crags of the roof finally allow enough light to risk navigating the narrow ledges of the chasm’s walls. Though Caeror says there are upward of fifty people living down here, the morning murk is suffocating in its silence. When I do see someone, it is always brief and always ends with their immediate flight. To a one they are disconcertingly thin and hollow-eyed. Their unrelenting caution, and my ongoing isolation, feels like another kind of toxin permeating the air.

And yet, it is not the crushing existence it could so easily be.

My time with Caeror, and his determination to extract some small joy no matter our surrounds, alleviates much of the despondency of this place. He is quick and clever like his brother, but different to Ulciscor in so many other ways. Open and unaffected in his conversation. Sympathetic as I struggle with what has happened. Cheerful when I need easy company, and morbidly witty whenever we talk of the iunctii, helping to ease my horror at their mere existence with jokes that I half suspect he’s been saving for years.

On my third day he decides to tell me a series of stories about Ulciscor as a boy. After the final one my bursting laughter ricochets down the chasm, and its echo startles me with the purity of its genuine, simple enjoyment.

And so, remarkably, I do not dread the days as I should. I have no doubt that it is partly Caeror’s seven years of adaption that allows him his attitude. But there is also a deliberateness to his levity. The kind of man who is not just upbeat, but who actively considers how he might best make others feel the same. It is impossible to be near him for any significant amount of time and not, even reluctantly, smile.

It helps. Gods, it helps.

Today, light seeping down the rocky grey walls and illuminating the distinctive paintings covering the tomb entrances, begins just like the others. I’m fetched by Caeror. We walk for a bit and then sit on some steps, perched above the gloom of Qabr.

And he helps me try to comprehend this new reality.

“Sleep alright?” He hands me a bowl of barley gruel and a cup of water as we make ourselves comfortable.

I nod my thanks, carefully savouring my first bland mouthful. This will be all I get until tomorrow. The Vitaeria we all wear mean we only need a fraction of a normal meal per day to subsist. Which is fortunate, because though I haven’t seen the garden yet—where Caeror says the Qabrans have figured out how to coax some meagre life from the underground soil—I know its crops are constantly stretched to breaking point. “Better. I think my body’s finally getting used to what passes for daytime down here.” I finish and take a sip of water, trying not to make a face at the unpleasant brackish taste.

“Good. You’ll rotting hate it when you have to adjust to the sun again, though.” He gives the cheerful half smile that is his near constant expression, and pushes some strands of curly hair from his eyes. Even in the dim, the scar crossing his face back up to his missing ear is marked.

Then he places his obsidian sword carefully between us, the black blade clinking against stone.

Silence for a few seconds as I stare at it. The Instruction Blade, as Caeror calls it, is almost two feet long. Thin, obsidian polished to a glassy finish. I haven’t seen it since that first day when he used it on Djedef.

“I know you still have questions,” Caeror says quietly. “But I think it’s time to talk about why you’re here.”

I nod slowly. A pit in my stomach, though I’ve known this was coming, could sense his impatience yesterday as we danced around the subject. “Ka. The Concurrence. You want me to kill him, before he causes another Cataclysm.”

“Yes.” He understands it’s hard to hear, but doesn’t shy away from the reality of it.

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Of course you can. I realise it will take time to come to terms with it, Vis, but what’s the alternative? Living here in hiding for the rest of your days, and wondering if you’re responsible for the deaths of everyone you love back home? No,” he says firmly. Calmly certain. “And though I hate to admit it, we cannot wait for you to feel ready, either. If Ka discovers you’re Synchronous—on any world—he’ll hunt you down. Or worse, he’ll decide to trigger the Cataclysm early. We need to start our planning now.”

I close my eyes. As much as I want to argue, I know he’s right. Inaction picks a side . Estevan was wrong about many things, but not that. I’m no assassin, don’t want to do this—and I will find another way, if it’s possible.

But there’s no ignoring the position I’m in.

“Tell me about him,” I say heavily.

Caeror exhales, leans back slightly. Relief written plain at my implied acceptance. “The man himself? We don’t know a lot,” he admits. “The people in the cities worship him, but he never actually shows himself. It’s his priests who hold power, for the most part. Keep his systems in place and everything running. But there’s a great pyramid in the middle of Duat that’s almost certainly where he lives. It’s the only one of its kind among the cities. Considered holy ground, and heavily protected.”

I frown at the description. “You don’t even know if he’s there ?”

“He is. There are few places to hide on this world, Vis. And there are none more secure than that pyramid.”

I don’t suggest I’m convinced, but let it slide for now. “Well. Sounds easy, then.”

Caeror chuckles. “First, you’re going to need to get into Duat itself. The entrances are locked and watched constantly. Iunctii are sometimes sent beyond the walls—mostly to the mines—but they are recorded on the way out and checked when they return. Sneaking in that way is simply not an option.”

I chew my lip. “But you have a plan.”

Caeror nods, tugging at his sleeve in absent thought. Then he twists, picks up the Instruction Blade, and carefully offers it to me.

“Iunctii are Ka’s lifeblood. His eyes and ears and limbs. The backbone of his rule,” he says slowly. “Stab one of these through the heart of a iunctus you’ve imbued, and you can command them—as long as your hand is on the hilt. And then the command remains only while the blade is in. Limited utility, for us. But Ka… Ka has a way of controlling his iunctii through lasting connections. Distant, permanent connections. It has to be something to do with his imbuing them. Something only he can do.”

I stare at the cold black stone in my hand. Lighter than it should be. An uneasy suspicion slinking through me. “Except now you think I can do the same.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.” Bluntly honest as he meets my gaze. “But, we need to test if you’re actually Synchronous, anyway. And rotting gods. If you can?”

I examine the wicked, polished stone. The blur of my uncertain gaze reflecting darkly back at me. “So how do we find out?”

Caeror gives a tight smile. Apologetic.

“Experimentation.”

“AGAIN,” SAYS CAEROR. HIS TONE conveys no exasperation, no impatience. Only the gentle, unrelenting confidence of an instructor who knows his student is capable of achieving his goal.

After three hours, though, my own energy and forbearance—not to mention stomach for this process—is waning fast.

We are standing in Qabr’s gloom, the sound of rushing water the only accompaniment to our work, perhaps a half hour’s walk from the collection of tombs that houses the core of the tiny community down here. The entire journey was along the chasm’s rough stone floor, passing rows upon rows of darkened entrances and empty ledges and narrow stairs. A thousand thousand men and women buried down here from a war more than four thousand years old. Even now, I struggle to comprehend it.

We finally stopped here, just short of the first branching path I’ve seen. Along the right fork, the tombs continue. To the left a narrow waterfall pours from a hundred feet up, its contents splashing into a narrow pool before trickling down and vanishing again into a crevasse, crashing onward somewhere in the deep dark. Drawn underground from the massive river that flows through Duat. I’ve been thoroughly warned not to drink from it, or step in it, or even get too close. It won’t kill me while I wear the Vitaerium, but apparently even the light spray it creates can be painfully acidic.

I swallow the faint taste of bile and nod to Caeror’s instruction, turning again to Tash. He’s tall. Spindly and blank-faced as he stares fixedly at the ground. Or possibly at the Instruction Blade, which is buried in his shirtless chest up to the jagged hilt. “Ready?”

My Vetusian causes his eyes to flicker in momentary dismay at Caeror, who waves him down apologetically. “Vis.”

“Sorry.” It’s still hard to remember that even that much attempt at interaction makes the Qabrans uncomfortable, their rules surrounding strangers to their community incredibly strict. I gaze grimly at the blade. Delaying. I was the first to use it, today. We needed to start by ensuring I could actually imbue Tash, could correctly perform the process that I’d learned so much about over the past year, but never had occasion to try.

So I did it. Imbued the man using the excess Will from my khepri amulet, stabbed him and then commanded him to say things, do things. No matter that he had experienced an Instruction Blade before, or had volunteered for this. No matter that the initial command Caeror suggested was to tell him to feel no pain, so the agony of the wound would be brief.

After I succeeded, after Tash first found himself unable to resist obeying anything I told him, I emptied my stomach.

Since then, Caeror has taken over control of the Instruction Blade, telling Tash to be silent and still; my task has been to try and circumvent those commands—or at least add new ones—through imbuing alone. As my new instructor points out, the only way any of this will be of use is if I can reliably turn Ka’s eyes and ears against him.

The problem is that, hours later, I am still unable to make it work.

“How in the gods’ graves did you figure all of this out, anyway?” Not willing to start again, just yet.

“Yusef.”

I give an unsurprised grunt to the brief response. Yusef, I’ve learned this past week, was Caeror’s mentor. The man who rescued him from Solivagus when he first came through the Gate. The one who showed him how to use the Channels, and taught him almost everything of what he now knows of Duat. “How did he do it, though?”

“I don’t know the specifics, but I imagine it was passed down to him. The Qabrans have been in hiding for generations. Slowly dwindling, slowly dying out.” He chews his lip. “Yusef wanted to change that. He dedicated his life to finding out what he could about Ka, his weaknesses. Most people out here just survive, but Yusef… Yusef always wanted more.” A hint of melancholy. They were evidently close. “He had ties to other communities, too. Met with them, now and then, to exchange information. They may have given him hints as well.”

I stop. Genuinely interested. “There are other people hiding out here?” Caeror has told me a lot, but there’s still so much I don’t know about this place, this world.

“Of course! But I don’t know where, or how to contact them,” he adds, seeing I’m going to pursue the subject. “And the very few Qabrans who do won’t tell me. Perhaps when one of their children comes of marriageable age, or if there is some crisis they cannot overcome alone, they will take the risk. But caution is life out here, Vis. Each of us already holds the fate of one community. More than that is unnecessary.”

“Except there’s an entire network of resistance out there that we can’t access.”

“Except for that.” He shrugs and issues that crooked smile of his at me.

I give a soft, frustrated laugh. “Gods’ graves. Fair enough. One day I’ll find something that bothers you, though.”

“One of my teachers back home once told me that sometimes, the only thing we can control is our attitude. And sometimes that can be enough. It’s always seemed especially needed, here.” He winces. “Not getting on your nerves, I hope.”

“No. Gods, no. I admire it.” I do. Obiteum is a nightmare, but Caeror accepts it with such sanguine grace that it’s hard not to try and follow suit. “I wish I could be the same way.”

“Give it a few years. You are doing far, far better than I did in my first week. Believe me.” Caeror’s rueful smile is encouraging. “Now. I suspect Tash is getting bored, so…”

I sigh and nod to the gentle admonishment at my delay. Reach out and put my hand on Tash’s bare shoulder.

“Try one of the variants of the Caecilius visualisation. The one he suggested for Harmonic Reaction,” says Caeror, pacing around us as if trying to see the connection I’m attempting to make.

I consider, the iunctus’s unnaturally cool flesh utterly motionless beneath my grip. “Using myself as one of the Harmonic objects? And Tash as the other?” That feels wrong, but then so many of the things we’ve tried this afternoon feel wrong.

“Worth trying.” He sees my expression. Softens from academic curiosity to sympathy. “I know. Look, we only have about an hour of light left anyway. If you need to stop—”

“No.” I snap it out, more harshly than I mean to. The idea of leaving without making any progress whatsoever, knowing I’ll have to come back and start again tomorrow, is harder to face than continuing. “It’s a good suggestion,” I add, modifying my tone.

I turn away before he can say more or I can change my mind. Focus on Tash, burning his gangly image into my mind once again: a strong mental representation is the start of almost every Will-based process on Res, even if Caeror says it may not be necessary here. The frustrating thing—or the most frustrating thing, at least—is that while I know all the theory, excelled at virtually every practical aspect of the Academy, I’ve never actually used Will in any of these advanced ways before. I have no way of knowing whether my failures are from methodology or execution.

I’m fumbling in the dark, and the worst part is that I’m not even sure what I’m trying to find should feel like.

“Caecilius. Harmonic Reaction.” I mutter the words to myself. We focused on this in Class Four. A few gods-damned months ago. A Harmonic Reaction ties two objects together: if one moves in space, so must the other. But crucially, their weight becomes that only of the heavier object—which is why Harmonics are so key to the Hierarchy’s machinery. “Weight paralletics,” they call it. The reason things like Transvects can work.

Of course, I’m not concerned about how heavy we are, here. And in Res, people can’t be imbued. And a Harmonic Reaction with oneself isn’t possible. And Harmonics have nothing to do with somehow connecting to the gods-damned mind of another person.

But nothing else I’ve ever heard of does, either. So we may as well try.