The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 6

I MUTE A CRY AS Djedef lets out an agonised groan. The glistening tip of the obsidian sword juts from his chest. Caeror has one hand on his shoulder and the other firmly on the blade’s hilt, holding him in place from behind. “Say nothing except to answer my questions. Tell me what happened when you died. Be truthful. Leave nothing out that I would want to know,” he says in thick Vetusian.

I clench my fists. Shock, and the desire to do something, warring with Caeror’s warning. Djedef is evidently in pain and yet he doesn’t fall, doesn’t try to get away. If any blood seeps from his new wound, I cannot see it.

“I was… a few hours out of Duat. Heading east. Told… there would be someone out there… who might help.” He gasps the words but speaks slowly enough that I can follow without great difficulty. “One of those… things … came from nowhere. Didn’t… see it until it had seen me.”

“You were told someone would be in the desert?” Caeror’s interest is sharp.

“In… a message.” Djedef stumbles a little, but Caeror’s grip on him never wavers, not allowing him to move away. “Someone called Netiqret. He… supplied my khepri . Got me out. We never… met.”

Caeror breathes out, clearly dissatisfied. “And when the Gleaner killed you, it questioned you?”

“Yes.”

“What did you tell it?”

“What I… told you.”

“That wouldn’t be enough.” Caeror is frowning now. “What did you say to make it leave you so urgently?”

“I don’t know.”

The response changes something in Caeror. There’s a slight slumping of the shoulders. The barest tensing of muscle, though not so much that Djedef would notice.

“What time of day was it when you died, Djedef?”

“Morning. Not long before noon.”

Caeror nods, unseen by the man. Almost ready to relax again, but then he cocks his head to the side. “How many days have passed since the last restday in Duat?”

Djedef is suddenly moving. Jerking forward, physically hauling himself off the obsidian through his chest. Caeror yells for him to stop, tackles him to the ground, barely keeping the weapon embedded. Djedef writhes, tries to use the sand against his face to strip off his blindfold.

“Be still!” Caeror shouts it; as soon as the words are out of his mouth, Djedef goes limp. “Do not move. Do not speak.” He’s on his knees, one hand still on the blade’s hilt.

He steels himself. Lets go.

“We were in a—”

Djedef’s rapid words are cut off as Caeror grasps either side of his head, and twists. There’s a sharp snap. Djedef lies still.

Caeror watches him and then exhales, movements heavy. “A broken neck is almost always too much for Will to compensate for.” He extracts the obsidian sliver from Djedef’s chest and then rolls him over.

Positions the blade beneath his throat and then quickly, regretfully, slides it into his skull.

I take a shuddering step back as Caeror pulls the weapon out again and gets to his feet. He turns to me and holds out a hand in what he evidently means as a reassuring gesture.

“Why?” I whisper it.

“The Instruction Blades were originally Ka’s; using one on a mind he’s infected creates a kind of connection back to him. Using them for this isn’t ideal, but it’s still better than having Djedef wake up one night and try to murder us all.” He crouches, stabs the blade in the sand to clean it. “Ka can make iunctii forget things, but he can’t give them false memories. Which means that everything Djedef just said was the truth, but they must have caught him a day or two ago. Brought him back to Duat, then commanded him to reenact his death when they thought we were watching. They haven’t tried that for a few years.” Pulls the blade out again. Inspects it. “At least Ka will know he has no utility now. It should reduce the resources he’s willing to waste in finding him. Means they’ll give up sooner. Now help me cover him.”

I numbly do as he asks. We start kicking sand and piling stones over Djedef’s corpse. “But if he’s of no use—”

“The Gleaners will have already started a sweep when the body went missing, and now Ka has a direction. They’ll know we’re outside and can’t be more than a few hours away on foot. It’s not a big area for them to cover.” He talks quickly and urgently, all seriousness now. “Our tracks won’t be easy to spot, and the wind will help—but if they find the body in the next half hour, it could still be enough of a starting point for them to follow us.”

The last grains of sand conceal the remnants of Djedef’s face. Caeror steps back to give the nondescript mound a critical examination, then glances up at the sky. “Let’s move. Slow and steady. Erase our tracks like last time.”

He sets off, and I follow.

The sun is almost touching the horizon as we trudge up the shadows of dunes and then down through its deep orange light, Caeror’s intent visage leaving me in no doubt as to the danger. We’re only ten minutes in—surely not far from the cave entrance, though I have no easy point of reference—when he slows to a dismayed halt. Points to the sky in the west. “There.”

I follow his finger. Dark spots against the purple glow of sunset above Duat. Moving gradually apart. Getting larger. “What do we do?”

“We can’t make it. Not without leaving tracks.” He comes to the decision swiftly. “We have to hide.”

“How?”

“This way.” He jags off to the left, directly toward the oncoming specks. I move carefully after him, gaze twitching between my job and those distant blots. I still don’t know exactly what the Gleaners are, but I believe Caeror’s fear of them well enough.

Within a half minute we’re suddenly scurrying across sand that’s shallow, hard and uneven underfoot, small pools of white contained by craters of wind-smoothed rock. Harder to traverse quickly, but I can immediately see the advantage. I follow Caeror’s darting footsteps as he leaps from one solid surface to another in a crouching run.

“Here.” I gasp my relief as Caeror brings us to a skidding halt after another two minutes. The shapes in the sky are larger against the dying violet light, but still not enough to make out detail. They’re swinging back and forth, I think. Tracing a systematic path toward us, rather than a direct one. “Lie on your stomach. Arms forward, cloak over your head to create an air pocket. I’ll cover you.”

I go where he points without hesitation. We’re somewhere in the middle of the rocky surface, and I’m quickly prostrate in one of the smaller white-filled breaks, about ten feet wide. “Will this work?”

“Wind’s enough that most of our tracks will be gone. And dusk will help.” Not the most comforting answer. He starts frantically kicking sand over me. It’s fine and still hot and trickles everywhere. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe. Until then, whatever you do, stay perfectly still,” his muffled voice warns me from the dark.

The soft crunch of fading footsteps, then silence.

I lie there in tense discomfort. Muscles cramping. Breath thick and painful. There’s a constant tickling at my skin from the shifting grains trickling their way beneath my clothes. There’s no sound.

Long minutes pass. Ten, at least. Maybe twenty. The acidic air starts to taste stale. I begin to wonder if something has gone wrong.

A particularly strong gust of wind. A flash of dim light as the corner of my cloak is tugged from my aching fingers. Sand slithers in. Then another gust before I can snag it again. My protection folds away. My head is exposed.

I lie there, frozen. I’m facing west. At first there is only horizon and the embers of sunset. Then something shifts in the sky. Floating soundlessly. I clamp my teeth together.

It’s a person.

They’re at least a hundred feet off the ground. Looking in the opposite direction. Upright and arms at their sides, as if standing, but nothing to support them. Swathed in a covering white robe, which flows behind them unsettlingly as they hover.

I watch, not breathing, as the figure drifts to the side. A controlled movement as they observe the horizon. Its arms are all wrong. Too long, too thin.

Then it turns slightly to the north, the dying light glints off a polished surface, and I realise they’re not arms at all.

They’re two blades.

I can’t take my eyes off them. Symmetrical and yet different from each other, I recognise numbly. Obsidian on the left. What looks like granite on the right. Not being gripped, though. Just hard surface up to the elbow, then some sort of stone sleeve affixing them to each bicep. Nightmarish, razor-thin replacement limbs.

I repossess myself enough to slowly, ever so carefully, find the hem of my cloak. Gradually, gradually draw the covering back over my head with a trembling hand. Squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath and pray that whatever is outside won’t spot the exposed linen.

An eternity of thudding heartbeats, and then my cloak is abruptly being pulled aside. I sputter and hack and flinch away as sand rains down.

“They’re past.” Caeror’s voice is low as he drags me to my feet, helping me brush off the worst of the grit as I spit more. The sun has completed its descent below the horizon. “Wind blew some sand off your cloak. You were lucky.”

“It blew the cloak off my gods-damned face. What…” My voice is shaking, though I have the presence of mind to match Caeror’s near whisper. “What was that?”

“You saw one?” Caeror chokes an aghast laugh as he takes in my affirmation. “Rotting gods, Vis. Lucky doesn’t begin to describe it, then. That was a Gleaner.”

“But it was a person .”

“A dead person. Well. Most of a dead person. Those blades aren’t gloves.” He pats me on the back reassuringly as he examines the darkening sky. Unperturbed. Just a fact of life, out here. “They’re a kind of iunctus, controlled by Ka. By the Concurrence. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of them. All connected somehow. Able to share information with one another, instantly and over vast distances.”

“Gods’ graves.” I shudder, anxiously scanning the horizon myself. “Where does all the Will to imbue them come from?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I suspect from other iunctii. They can cede—and you can bring them back for less than you gain from their ceding. Which as I’m sure you can imagine, has absolutely no potential for abuse by Ka.” He doesn’t give me time to take in the horror of that concept. “We’re safe to move. Keep covering our tracks, but we don’t need to be too worried: they never sweep the same area within a few hours, and the wind will have erased everything by morning.”

I don’t respond. Don’t know what I can say, to that. We walk for a while without talking, my mind racing.

“On Solivagus,” I eventually say quietly. “When I asked how I could possibly stop a new Cataclysm, you said I was here to kill a god.” The statement’s been hanging over me, even through the insanity of all this.

“Hyperbole. Sort of.” Caeror leans into his climbing of a dune. Sand cascades back down behind him where his feet dig in, an almost luminescent white series of waves in the last of dusk. “Most people here believe Ka is a god. I can’t really blame them given that he’s ruled the cities, controlled every inch of vaguely liveable ground in this world for thousands of years. Not to mention has complete command of the iunctii.” He shakes his head wryly. “It wasn’t a leap to realise he must be the Concurrence.”

I’m quiet for a few steps. The desert is rapidly becoming chilly. The grit that wormed its way inside my clothes while hiding sticks to my cooling sweat, every movement chafing. “You’re saying all of this—the Cataclysms, the way this world is—it’s because of one man ?” No hiding my incredulity.

“One man and a lot of dead people, I suspect.” He sees me still struggling with the concept. “Those ruins you went to on Solivagus. The ones Veridius and I found, with all the iunctii pinned with Instruction Blades?” He taps the obsidian blade on his belt. “Those people were put in there to become a kind of interconnected machine, built to try and circumvent the security measures on Res that kill anyone who goes through the Gate. And based on what we translated, those measures were put in place by one man. A man who would remain untouchable so long as he alone was present in all three worlds, because it meant he had dominion over Will. Would be the only one who could control it as it had been before the Rending.” He glances at me. Assessing. “Synchronism, they called it.”

I try to swallow my unease. “I’ve heard that before.” The darkness is almost complete now; stars have begun to shimmer in the east. “The husks—the iunctii—who had the control bracers for the Labyrinth. They said they were being punished because they attempted to ‘gain synchronism and remove the seal to Obiteum.’ ” I don’t have to work to dredge up the words. That eerie mantra is burned into my memory.

“I still don’t know what the last bit means. But, yes. People have been trying to access the Gate for centuries.”

“And I’m the first to succeed?” I know the answer as soon as it’s out of my mouth.

He gives me a look, eyebrows pointedly raised.

I snort. At least he’s not trying to coddle me. “Fine. But you think I have this ability. Synchronism.” I don’t feel any different. “And the plan is for me to… what? Kill someone with it?”

“The plan is to stop Ka, no matter what it takes. Veridius will undoubtedly be trying to do the same to his counterpart in Res—and perhaps if he realises you’ve made it through, the version of you there will end up succeeding before you ever have to do anything here. But we can affect only what we have in front of us. If we remove the Concurrence from this world, he is no longer Synchronous in Res. It stops the Cataclysm. And that is all that matters.”

I give a soft, bitter laugh. “ ‘Remove’ him. You make it sound so easy.”

“I know what I’m asking, Vis. I know . But if we’re right, it’s the life of an evil man who has lived millennia past his time. One life, in order to save millions. And you may be the only one who can take it.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if killing this Ka doesn’t stop the Cataclysm?”

“Then we will have saved one world rather than two. You saw the Gleaners. What we had to do to Djedef. Life here is a nightmare, and at worst, we help people finally wake up from it. Give them a chance at something else. Something better.” Caeror glances at me. Compassionate, firm conviction in his voice. “I can’t force you. This has to be your decision. But I do need you to at least hear me out before you make it. Please.”

The last of the sun is gone from the sky. Beneath starlight, I can see the black pyramid of Duat down in the distant valley, an ocean of undulating white in between. I’ve never wanted, let alone planned to kill someone before. I revile the idea. Resist it with every fibre of my being.

But if Caeror is telling the truth—if there’s even a chance that he’s right—then… I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I breathe in the stinging air, and shiver against the abrupt chill of the coming night.

“I’m listening,” I say quietly.