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 Ican 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. Ithasto 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 amsosorry,” 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. Tounderstand.” 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.Monstrousthings. 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.
LXXIX
I WAKE ON A BED OF FURS. SUNLIGHT STREAMS INthrough a window. I am in a hut, not dissimilar to the one I was first kept in when I arrived at Caer Áras, but more spacious. I am alone.
I groan. Slowly, cautiously, prod at my body. Bruised but not broken. Wounds still there, but bandaged. I am in fresh clothes, and wrapped in a pure white cloak that suggests my claims during the battle have not been disputed, though I see no sign of Lir’s staff. Whoever treated me left the scarab medallion around my neck, tucked against my chest. Fortunate. I cannot imagine I would have survived any other way; I can still barely believe that I am breathing. I even, briefly, check my own heartbeat, admitting some relief when I feel its steady thumping against my palm.
And then I bring my silver arm up in front of my face.
It is still attached. Still works. I close the hand into a fist and open it again, waggling the fingers, marvelling at how it feels just like the real thing. Partly as if I was using thenasceann, my sense of it intimate, a true extension of myself. Partly as I was taught it should work in Res, with complete mental command over it and its moving parts.
I still don’t understand how it’s possible. How and why I was able to unconsciously imbue it as I did.
But it seems that I may, at least, still have the opportunity to try and find out one day.
