Before I am overcome with emotion, I smile tightly and stride to the door, not looking back.
The druid and one of his men are waiting just outside; a quick call from Lir and the other appears from around the side of the house, apparently having been sent to ensure I didn’t try fleeing out the window. Lir eyes my clearly almost empty bag, then shrugs and starts walking.
“How long travelling?” The few clouds dotting the sky are turning pink as the sun hovers just below the horizon.
There’s immediately a muttered complaint from the taller of the warriors, something I don’t catch, but Lir silences it with a look. “Two weeks. Perhaps three.”
“Three weeks,” I repeat slowly, sure I have misunderstood.
“Time enough for us to talk,” the druid observes.
I want to ask exactly where Caer Áras is, fathom why the journey will take so long, but I know the answer won’t mean anything. Eventually, I just nod.
“Time enough,” I agree, trying to keep the unease from my voice.
XVIII
THE DESERT TRICKLES BENEATH MY TUNIC, ITCHING ANDburning in equal measure as I lie all but submersed on the edge of the dune. The baking mid-morning heat assaults my back through my thick robe and the heavy layer of sand. I ignore it all. Remain motionless. The object of our observation today, the shimmering black pyramid of Duat, lies only five miles away. The chances of Gleaners passing overhead are far greater than usual.
“Go over the layout again.” Caeror doesn’t move his head, eyes firmly fixed on the city. We’re both hooded, blending nearly perfectly with the harsh white of the sand. “Eastern quarter of Neter-khertet. How many access points to the tunnels?”
“Three.”
“Where?”
“First is an obelisk near the river, about a hundred feet from the water. Second is in the temple near the centre. Third …” I close my eyes. Envisaging the detailed sketches Caeror has made me study of Neter-khertet—the name of Duat’s massive western district, where the city’s thousands of servile iunctii are apparently housed—and then draw from memory over and over again. “Third is hidden behind a statue at the end of a colonnade. It’s near a main thoroughfare. Probably the hardest one to get into unseen.”
“Excellent.” I can’t help but feel some pleasure at the quiet approval in Caeror’s voice, reward for near two months of exhausting work. From waking to sleeping, the lonely gloom of Qabr has been filled with a training as intense as anything I went through at the Academy. Not just memorising sections of Duat’s vast layout, or the entire network of tunnels beneath it that will apparently provide a far more discreet means of its traversal. Trying to graspmaat, the city’s name for its complex system of laws and customs, and one of the Concurrence’s many means of control. Learning to understand and roughly mimic its peculiar dialect of Vetusian. Gathering a basic knowledge of the writing system that covers the walls of the Qabran tombs, so that I might recognise at least some of the fundamental symbols I will inevitably encounter.
And throughout it all, doing all I can to understand exactly what it means to be Synchronous.
We spent the first couple of days focusing on a task that Caeror firmly believes I should be capable of: using Will in the same way that it can be used in Res. However, I soon found that while I can imbue objects, I cannot make them move or do anything else unexpected. We talked long into the evenings about the issue, sometimes arguing, sometimes speaking over one another as we excitedly extrapolated on each other’s thoughts. Perhaps it is a question of intrinsic capability, and my Obiteum-centred Will is simply manifesting its powers more easily. Or perhaps my copies in Res and Luceum need to be able to use their form of Will, first, before I can here. Or perhaps it is dependent on some extra mental process that changes Will’s fundamental nature before use, like water being transformed into steam or ice to serve a different purpose.
In the end, though, we bandied a thousand different variations on the same few theories between us without practical success. While Caeror has his guesses, we don’t even know for sure what Will from Luceum is supposed to do.
And ultimately, advantageous though it would certainly be, we do not need any of it for what is to come.
Since that somewhat grim realisation, our focus has turned to spending hours of every day with Tash, experimenting with my ability to control iunctii. Testing its limitations. Practicing what I know I can do over, and over, and over again until it becomes as natural as breathing. The process still makes me sick to my stomach, and I know Caeror finds it just as distasteful. But reluctance cannot ignore necessity. We have spent countless hours debating how I might infiltrate Duat, and I have come to the same conclusion as my patient, ever-optimistic mentor.
This is the only way.
“You’re certain the layout won’t have changed?” The maps that Yusef left to Caeror are astoundingly detailed. But they have also clearly been collated over the course of centuries of resistance, some of the papyrus scrolls I’ve been looking at dangerously brittle from age.
“There was a defector from Duat, not long after I arrived.” Ulciscor’s brother is patient, despite having made this assurance before. “She confirmed what she could, and if those maps didn’t noticeably change in a thousand years, I don’t know why they would have in the past five. But more importantly, you have to remember that the entire core of it—every tunnel and at least half thecity—is made of the same stuff that protects the Qabran garden. Same stuff as the Instruction Blade. It’s unbreakable, as far as we can tell. Except for maybe bymutalis,” he adds quietly.
It’s the first time in a week that he’s mentioned it. His name for that pulsing, revolting power infusing the golden door in Qabr, the one that supposedly only the Synchronous can survive contact with—despite my insistence to him that I did, long before I ever came to this world. Even just the name conjures a queasy feeling.
He thinks—or rather, Yusef thought—that there might be something beyond the door that utilisesmutalis. A weapon, or something that could be used as one. Given what I have seen of the power previously, it would come as no great surprise.
The silence settles for a while as we focus on Duat.
“Still connected to Tash?” Caeror asks absently.
“Yes.” I check the representation of the iunctus sitting in the back of my mind anyway, but it’s as strong as ever. As Caeror suspected, my time at the Academy has proven invaluable; Will’s effects may be different here, but the techniques to use it seem effectively the same.
“What’s he doing?” Caeror hears my frown. “Perfect now or dead later, Vis.”
I grimace in irritation I know he can’t see, close my eyes, and mentally send the command. I established the link with Tash before we left this morning—the key to the initial connection, I’ve found, is a sort of empathy, the ability to identify with something that he’s also experiencing in a given moment—but this is much easier. Controlling the iunctus is not greatly different to the way we were taught to control objects. A forceful imposition upon the image in my mind.
