Chapter 51
I have nothing to offer him in exchange but my honesty. “Because I want to know more about them. If I were imprisoned back home, with no clue as to why, I’d be banging on the bars and demanding answers.” I gesture to the landscape with my trunk. “Here, out of time, the entire world is a prison.”
“My people didn’t have these prisons you speak of,” Khephnes says. “But I understand what you mean. I’m trapped here forever, but you’ll go home soon enough. Again, why should I help you?”
Frustration boils up in me, but I tamp it down. I’d probably feel the same way if I were in his position.
God, please don’t let my real body die.
I spread my forelegs helplessly out to either side. “What else do you have to do?”
He looks at me for a long moment—then, to my surprise, laughs wryly. “As you’ve seen, my days are very busy, but I suppose I can squeeze in some time to teach you. But if you aren’t an apt pupil, I’ll quit.”
I’m shocked at his agreement. Perhaps my bluntness surprised him enough to take an interest in me. “Thank you. I’ll do my best.”
Once we’re returned to our room, I let Bianca know about my upcoming studies. “Good idea! I can’t believe Khephnes agreed.”
“I think he’s bored.”
“Bored is better than depressed. Though I suppose he’s that as well.” She wriggles her forelegs. “So far, you’re still the furthest person in the future—my future—I can find evidence of. I don’t know what that means, not yet, but maybe we can find some sort of pattern…”
While she continues her work, I study with Khephnes. He requests writing implements from our guards, who agree without seeming to care why we’d want such things. They bring us a sheaf of papyrus-like paper, an ink pot, and a brush made to be held with the trunk.
But the paper has writing on one side already and is crumbling around the edges from age, and the purplish ink is long dried to the bottom of its little stone pot.
Khephnes holds up the ink pot to the guards. “Don’t you have anything that isn’t dried up?”
“We do not write,” the guard replies.
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused. Clearly they have written language, judging from the signs on the walls and buildings, the marks already on the paper.
“We learn, we read, what else would we need?” the guard explains, then settles back into his post by the door.
I turn to Khephnes. “I don’t understand.”
In his turn, Khephnes is confused by me. “It’s a guard—why should it need to write? I suppose the scribe it received this from only handed over whatever old junk it had lying around.”
Of course—in Khephnes’s time, most people couldn’t read at all. It was probably impressive if a guard could even do that much. “Did one of their scribes teach you, then?”
“No, a guard brought me a sort of primer and helped me decipher what I couldn’t figure out on my own. Back then, I was afraid to ask for too much, so I just scratched words onto my couch instead of requesting writing implements. I had to give back the primer, but we can go without.”
I suppose it makes sense for guards to know how to read the signs, but not necessarily do any writing on their own. Still, the situation nags at me, though I can’t say why.
Khephnes goes to the pool to get some water to try to reconstitute the ink. While we wait for the dried mess to soften, he reads what’s already written on the papers.
“What does it say?” I ask.
He holds a sheet carefully in his trunk, in a position so that his center eyes—the ones with the sharpest vision—can inspect it. “It’s hard to make out, between the bits that are falling apart and the faded ink.” After scanning it some more, he reads:
…my reward. The worst is the little ones, they…to adulthood and then…should never have agreed, but I didn’t know…nothing, they create nothing…suns…the Outside…”
He stops. “The Outside? The realm of Nyarlathotep?”
“Who?”
“A god of what the ignorant call chaos.” Khephnes seems shaken, though I don’t know why.
“My lord Nephren-ka built a great fane for him deep in the Red Land, the desert. I was studying there, learning the magical arts, when I was taken.” He flexes his forelegs.
“No wonder the Swarm in my body died. Nyarlathotep would have seen it was not me and struck down the imposter for profaning his temple.”
I struggle to follow his train of thought. “And this Outside is Nyarlathotep’s domain?”
“Yes.” Khephnes slowly lowers the paper. “I don’t understand. The Swarm don’t seem to use magic. Unless their wizards are few and uninterested in us. That would make sense.”
I start to express incredulity at the very idea of magic—then realize I’m in the body of a creature alien to me, trapped in a different time than my own, talking to a man whose own body died millennia before I was even born.
Of course magic exists. For all I know, this god does as well, and my family spends Sundays praying to the wrong deity.
Khephnes flips the paper over to its unmarked side. “I must think on this. For now, let’s see how the ink is doing.”