The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 78

MY FOOTSTEPS ARE SWALLOWED AS I hurry along the vast, gold-lit colonnade crowned by the luminous pyramid ahead. The Sanctum has been a shell. Eerily, utterly empty. No sign of movement at all since the Overseers closed the massive obsidian gates behind me.

No hint as to whether the quiet is Ka’s doing, or Kiya’s. I pour more speed into my stride. Every moment she gives me is of value.

The triangular tunnel entrance across to Ka’s pyramid soon looms ahead. Soundless and dark, but this time it feels different. Hollow. Cautious fear dictates a pausing at its edge, a peering into its shadows, but I can see no silhouettes. No lurking forms attached high to the inwardly sloping walls.

I clench my hands into sticky, stinging fists, ensuring the blood from the cuts I made a few minutes ago is still flowing. Then I step into the darkness.

Nothing happens.

It takes me five minutes of anxious walking to cross. Every footstep echoes. My eyes strain, but aside from the distant triangle of golden light that marks the opening to the other side, I can see nothing of my surrounds. I keep to the middle of the path. Quick but careful. My alertness comes to nothing.

And then I am through, and out, blinking, into the radiance of the Pyramid of Ka.

The stairway stretches upward before me, each step lit with a fuzzing, thrumming line of gold. A thousand of them, at least, and the only door I can see is at the top. The very ground emanates heat, vibrates unsettlingly beneath my feet.

I start the climb.

After the first hundred stairs, the cover of the tall surrounding walls left behind, I feel naked. No shadows to hide in here. No side streets. No careful management of pace and positioning to avoid eyes. I am brightly lit, a lone figure steadily ascending the most visible structure in the city. Any eye turned this way will see me.

And many do.

I keep my pace steady, despite the temptation to climb as quickly as possible. I cannot afford to be exhausted by the time I face Ka. And so I stop every so often. Turn to find at first a few curious onlookers, then more, until finally it feels as though the streets are clogged with upturned faces. Silent, as far as I can tell. Watching with confusion? Fascination? Horror?

I am treading sacred ground, and Ka has not struck me down.

The city looks almost peaceful from so high up. I can see clear across the river to Neter-khertet, the green glow of the streets there flooding upward to create an ugly miasma, an ephemeral cloud that screams of death and decay. I see Westerners gathered over there, too; some are watching me, some are going about their daily business. Many more are clumped around the end of the shattered bridge, back some way to avoid the notice of the Gleaners which still glide ethereally over the now-smooth waters.

An Overseer must surely have spotted my progress by now, but none of Ka’s iunctii even twitch in my direction. The Overseers themselves cannot follow me, not here. But the Gleaners could, if they were informed.

Kiya’s interference continues to work. I wonder for how much longer.

I continue trudging upward. Higher and higher. Twenty minutes. Forty. No hint of resistance. The terrifying thrum of energy and pulse of golden light my only companions. Through my constant anxious checking of the scenes below, I cannot help but again wonder at what will happen, should I be successful here. Am I about to kill some, or even all, of the iunctii as well? I have no clear concept of what infrastructure Ka might be supporting through simply being alive.

But over my shoulder, I see the Aurora Columnae in the Sanctum pulsing more brightly than ever, too. It reminds me of Caeror’s exhortations. His brother and my friends in the world we left behind. The risk of something terrible happening here, or the certainty of it happening there.

And I press on.

It takes almost an hour to reach the entrance. My legs ache by the end despite my attempts at managing my pace, breath coming in hard gasps as I’m faced with a door made entirely of gold. Similar in construction to the mutalis door in Qabr, but no crook and flail on this one. Just a single, large symbol.

A scarab.

Unlike both Qabr and the rest of this pyramid, though, the door is oddly still, not pulsing and flickering and vibrating with the unsettling rhythm that I’ve almost become accustomed to over the past hour. I frown, then push against it tiredly. The scarab seems to flicker, just for a moment.

The door doesn’t move.

I push again, harder, but this time nothing at all happens. I wipe sweat from my brow and take a slow, deep breath to fight off the panic. There will be a way to open it. There has to be.

I glance around, my gaze sweeping the city below. Duat looks so calm from up here; I can barely see the people now. Except, I realise, for the Gleaners. They’re in a swarm. Seem bigger than everyone else.

“Oh, vek .” Not now. I’m so close. I snatch out my knife, slice across my palm again and grip my weapons. Slam the crook into the door as it thrums to life beneath my grasp.

It bounces off with a dull, metallic clang.

I try again twice more in frenzied panic before I recover myself enough to accept that it’s not working. Vek vek vek . The Gleaners are getting closer. Arrowing toward me. No question that they know I’m here.

“Think,” I mutter in desperate self-exhortation. “Think think think think think .”

Of course this door wasn’t destroyed by the mutalis ; it’s surrounded by the stuff. But it’s inactive, too. Like my weapons.

I slam my bloodied hand against the scarab.

It quivers, thrums. Flickers.

The door swings open.

There’s a gold-lit stairwell. Descending, this time. I rush inside and try to shut the door again, but it won’t budge.

Rotting gods . No time. I give up, grip my thrumming weapons tightly, and bolt downward.

THE LONG, WINDING STAIRCASE HAS no defences. No one and nothing guarding the way. No traps. Not even any side openings. I think I can hear sounds of pursuit but the Gleaners will have to navigate like normal people, down here, too narrow a space for flight. The interior of the pyramid, however, does not pulse and quiver with mutalis . They won’t need to worry about making contact with its surface.

Once I stop, I doubt I’ll have long before they catch up to me.

I dash recklessly downward for what must be at least a couple of minutes before I reach another door. Simple wood, this time; I push it open with a mixture of urgency and caution, but there is no sound, no movement from beyond.

I slink into a massive chamber. The roof slants upward to a point a hundred feet above; the room itself is at least as wide and long. All hard angles and black obsidian, lit by the same golden lines as the rest of the pyramid.

I stare around at its contents, more bemused than anything else. Tall, long bookshelves create row upon row across the centre of the room, scrolls jutting haphazardly from slots clearly made for holding them. Around the edges of the room are several desks, each one covered in more paper. There are comfortable-looking seats. A couch in the corner.

I hurriedly drag the nearest desk so that it’s blocking the door—it won’t stop the Gleaners, but it might give me some precious extra seconds—and then snatch up one of the pieces of paper on it. Handwritten largely in glyphs, with some sort of technical diagram and notes in what might be ancient Vetusian in places, though I’m not inclined to divert my focus to translation right now.

“Vek,” I mutter, tossing it aside and looking around again. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this feels more like a library than the home of a god-masquerading immortal. It’s messy, in the same way I remember Praeceptor Taedia’s office being at the Academy. The product of an absent mind, maybe, but hardly a genocidal one.

No time to ponder it, though; I can already imagine the Gleaners clambering down the stairs. I push on into the room, skirting the central shelves, eyes darting for anything of significance.

I’m almost halfway across the space when I spot the triangular stone table, and the finely clothed man lying atop it.

I freeze. A breath to reassure myself that he’s not moving, not reacting to my presence, and then thrumming weapons at the ready, I hurry over. Asleep? No. It’s more shrine than bed, made of the same obsidian as everything else in here. The man’s arms are at his side and his eyes are closed, but there’s a stillness to his repose that speaks of more than just slumber.

There are lines around the table’s edge. An inscription that pulses. All glyphs; I don’t know their meaning but I recognise at least some of them.

The same as were written on the sarcophagus, in the room where I got the crook and flail.

I stop in front of the table. Lost. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it; there are no exits, nowhere else Ka might be hiding in here that I can see. But this stranger looks… normal. A handsome man in his mid-forties. A short beard, wavy black hair. More Catenan colouring than those from Duat tend to have, I suppose, but otherwise no different to anyone I might pass on the streets far below.

I walk around him. Careful not to touch the stone on which he’s lying. I feel a pulse coming from it. A Vitaerium? I close my eyes. There are traces of Will trailing away from each of the three corners of the table. Doing what, though, I can only guess.

It has to be him. It has to be. No one has been seen coming or going from this pyramid in living memory. And I don’t have time to be cautious.

“If I’ve got this wrong, then I am so sorry,” I mutter.

I carefully touch my crook to his chest.

Nothing happens.

It is Ka.

I exhale. Unsure whether to be relieved or horrified. This is so much easier, and so much worse. “I thought you’d be awake.” My lip curls in frustration as I say the words to the catatonic man. “I thought I’d get the chance to talk to you. To ask why you’ve done all this. To understand .” I slowly release my white-knuckled grip on my crook and flail. Hook them back on my belt, and draw my knife. Hover it over his chest.

A crashing at the door. A series of urgent, heavy thumps.

“Kiya better have been right about you controlling those things,” I mutter. Heart pounding. Sweating. Still delaying, still hesitant, even now. “Or this is going to be a very short gods-damned celebration.”

I have to do this. For the people he’s enslaved. For Caeror. For Emissa, for Callidus and Eidhin and Aequa back home. This man may look unassuming, here in front of me. But he has done monstrous things. Monstrous things. And will continue to, unless I stop him.

My father never sentenced a man to death. And yet he told me once that the price of a life cannot be incalculable to a ruler, no matter how much we wish it were so. That in the end, there would be situations in which we simply had to value it for ourselves, and live with the consequences.

There’s a splintering sound at the door. Pieces of wood clattering to stone. The Gleaners are through.

I push the knife into Ka’s heart.