Chapter XXV #2
Somehow the close, reflective triangular hallway, its apex only a foot above my head, feels even more unsettling as we traverse it alone.
The openings to the left and right are all sealed; occasionally I think I hear something from behind the dark walls—mutters, moans, pleading—but it’s so faint that I can’t be sure it’s not my imagination.
I alternate looking ahead and behind, all too aware that these long corridors mean that any stray Gleaner entering will be able to immediately see me from a distance.
But there is nothing. No movement except our own.
It is a full five minutes, but only three turns, before the desperate shouting starts echoing to us.
Not my imagination this time, I realise as the yelling becomes more audible. Only one voice that I can hear. Male. Hoarse, panicked and pleading. Even if I didn’t know the Vetusian, it would be impossible to mistake the content.
Help.
I restrain the urge to break into a sprint, the hair on the back of my neck rising as we get closer and the man’s tone—words and volume increasing, message remaining largely the same—becomes more urgent.
Duodecim moves with mute purpose as we approach the triangular opening that is the source of the supplications.
They’re addressing someone. Asking them to stop.
Begging them, and the great god Ka, and anyone else who will listen, to just stop.
Duodecim reaches the doorway and doesn’t hesitate, turning and disappearing from the hallway.
I enter after him just in time to see him spear the other Gleaner inside straight through the back of the skull.
I give an involuntarily, gargled sound of shock at the unexpectedness of it, eyes fixed on the horrific sight for several seconds before I can take anything else in.
There’s a thick, wet sound as Duodecim pulls his gore-coated granite blade from the woman’s head, allowing her body—truly lifeless, this time—to slide off it and slump to the floor.
The pleading voice has stopped, and I finally wrench my gaze past Duodecim’s hulking form to see a man manacled to a slab that looks uncomfortably like a Sapper.
He is blindfolded, pressing himself back against the stone as if trying to sink straight into it.
Duodecim walks up to him and draws back his granite blade.
“Wait.” I snap out the command aloud, urgent. Duodecim stops dead. He stands in front of the prisoner, left arm drawn back, motionless.
“Who is there?” The blindfolded man has finally registered something is happening.
His Vetusian is thickly accented, much harder to grasp than the version Caeror has had me practicing.
But my familiarity with the language, and our constant sessions over the past months, are enough for me to understand.
Vek. I need time to think this through. The tip of Duodecim’s perfectly still granite blade hovers a few inches from the stranger’s right shoulder.
He’s clearly afraid, clearly a prisoner.
My eyes stray to the unused blades on the bench.
The thick, pooled blood on the floor. Bile burns my throat as I put it together.
This man was to be a new Gleaner?
He nods.
You were intending to make him one yourself?
He nods again. I gaze around at the blood.
New Gleaners are sometimes violent? This was your distraction? Set him loose?
He affirms it, one more time.
Vek. Vek, vek, vek. It all passes between us within the space of a few seconds.
I turn back to the man, who is again asking in a trembling voice what is happening, starting to get louder again and squirming against his restraints.
The longer I stand here, the more chance there is that we are discovered.
Is he alive? I ask it out of desperation.
Duodecim shakes his head.
In that moment, I almost do it. I almost instruct Duodecim to proceed. There is no telling how long the hallway outside will remain empty. All it will take is one Gleaner to see me, and none of this works. And this man—this dead man—is my best way out.
Is he being controlled? Is he in any way under the influence of anyone except himself?
A shake of the head. Vek.
The path you described to me. It leads from here?
A nod.
Be the distraction yourself. Forget what I look like and every other detail of how I have made you obey.
If you are captured, respond in all ways as if you never met me, as if none of this has happened.
Our experiments with Tash suggest that as long as I was the last one to imbue him, he’ll continue to obey, even if he gets conflicting commands from a previous imbuing.
I hope to the gods’ graves that holds. Once you have caused enough of a distraction to draw away the Gleaners in our path, do whatever you can to make sure any questioning of you is impossible.
I try to think of it as a mercy. It doesn’t feel that way.
Tap your blade on the ground to indicate the number of minutes we should wait before leaving.
Click, click, click. Silence.
Go.
Duodecim strides away without hesitation.
It’s a bad move. A gods-damned stupid decision.
I’m risking his being caught and thus my Synchronism, the purpose of my being here, becoming known to Ka.
And I’ll be losing my connection to the Gleaner either way.
No time to second-guess myself, though. No time to regret what I’ve just done.
I stride over to the bound iunctus. He’s a little shorter than me, muscled and hale-looking.
Clean-shaven, including his scalp, and immediately in much better condition than any of the Qabrans were. He looks about in his mid-thirties.
“Stay quiet. I’m a friend. I’m going to let you free.
Once you are, you need to follow me.” I say it in careful Vetusian, hoping the meaning is clear.
It seems to be. The stranger shies away from my voice, close as it is, but after a moment he nods anxiously.
His body still trembles as I rip away his blindfold, allowing him to see me.
The man takes me in, panic emanating from him like a physical heat, but he holds his tongue. Nods again as our gazes meet. Good. He’s under control enough to do as I tell him.
I fiddle with the manacle on the right for about thirty seconds, thinking desperately.
I can’t risk imbuing him to ensure he does as he’s told; even if I could stomach the idea, between Duodecim and my injury, I don’t have the Will to spare.
Eventually I figure out the mechanism I’m working at and release it, moving on to the left.
A few more seconds of fumbling and the freed prisoner stumbles forward, putting fearful distance between himself and the slab.
“Wait until I move. Stay close. Your name?” It might be useful, if I need to get his attention.
“Ahmose.”
“Vis.” I hold up a hand to indicate that should be the extent of our interaction for now, and close my eyes.
Duodecim stands in a room not unlike the one Ahmose and I are in.
Another Gleaner lies on the floor, staring up at him, smears of black blood glinting where Duodecim has evidently sliced its blades from its body.
It tries to crawl away—an act of self-preservation or something else, I have no idea—but Duodecim stalks after it.
With a quick thrust, he spears the fallen Gleaner through the mouth before turning and moving swiftly back into the hallway.
I come back to myself. The dead Gleaner was given plenty of time to see Duodecim, to know what was happening and broadcast a warning. Ka didn’t seem able to command Duodecim to stop, but other Gleaners will undoubtedly be coming to make sure he does.
Which, hopefully, leaves our way forward clear.
I beckon Ahmose and move at a half-crouching jog out of the room and to the left, the same direction that Duodecim took.
It’s been about three minutes and I have to trust the Gleaner’s assessment, have to assume he would have taken into account that out here we will be completely exposed.
We proceed in grim silence, every breath tense.
Once I hear running ahead and my heart goes to my throat.
A Gleaner passes across the corridor in front, flitting obliquely, visible for only a second. It never looks around.
Two lefts, straight past two crossroads, a right.
I keep the map Duodecim described to me tightly in my head.
It is a maze in here, and everything looks the same, all mirrored, triangular openings and straight lines of green light.
No way I could find my way without help.
No way I can figure out the way back if I miss a turn.
Four turns before the last one Duodecim gave me, the tunnels change.
The lines of light remain the same, but the mirrored black is replaced by dull stone, the lack of reflections making everything immediately darker.
Doors to the side are open, and we pass several empty rooms. I make the mistake of glancing in the first one.
The floor is slick, and manacles hang from the roof. A fetid smell wafts from it.
I hurry on, and Ahmose stays close behind.
Footsteps in several side passages now, measured but quick. I ignore them. Two turns remaining. One. It feels like there’s activity everywhere around us, but the passageways are narrower and twisting and more easily hide us from sight and still, somehow, we are unseen.
The last turn and there is light ahead. Not sunlight, not natural light, but a virulent glow that emanates across a great space.
We burst out the corridor entrance and onto a long, raised stone terrace. I skid to a halt.
Beyond the edge ahead, unfolding away from us below, is Duat.
It’s more vast than I could possibly have imagined.
The Infernis cuts through the heart of the massive city, just as Caeror said it would.
Everything closer to us—almost a third of the expanse, I would say—is a shimmering sea of black-mirror structures and roads, eerily lit and delineated by the same emerald lines of light as the tunnels we’ve just fled.
Wide streets reflect the motion of distant, white-clad forms shuffling along them.
I don’t need my hours of poring over maps to guess that this side of the river must be Neter-khertet, Duat’s great iunctii quarter.
Distant, across the single dark bridge slicing the Infernis, almost everything looks different.
Squat buildings of chalky stone, dusty-looking streets dividing them.
Though we are too far away to hear or see anything distinct, there is a dull hum that echoes from its direction that reminds me of Caten.
A constant background noise that by instinct I know is the combined voices of thousands upon thousands of people.
It’s all lit by the enormous radiant pyramid that sits at Duat’s heart, towering above all else.
Massive polished black stones edged with illuminating lines of warm gold.
No motion anywhere along its vast surface.
On the opposite side of the river, but its surrounding acres of darkly reflective structures are a blotch that seems to have seeped across the water into the otherwise bright, gold-tinged spread of the far side of the city.
I take as much of it in as I can before Ahmose tugs urgently at my arm.
The balcony we’re on is set high into one of Duat’s dark, inwardly sloping outer walls; the only path down is a covered stairwell off to the left.
It’s sealed off by a gate made of several spear-like bars; we hurry toward it, and as we do, I realise that something is off.
“We cannot go through here.” Ahmose is dismayed as he sees what I’m seeing, feels what I’m feeling. The fear of what is behind us suddenly wars with the fear of what is ahead.
Thrum.
The deep, terrifying discomfort presses down on my ears as we approach. Me forcing myself closer. The unsettling fuzzing of the air around each bar, a jagged visual warping, as though just briefly they are moving, as if the air around them is vibrating.
Red-coated stands. Screaming.
“Do not touch them. You will die.” Ahmose’s urgent voice cuts through the nightmare. Brings me sharply back to this one.
I use a precious second to move to the edge of the terrace and peer over. It’s two hundred feet to the stone below.
I back away, and close my eyes.
Duodecim is still fighting, using the narrow entrance of the room he’s in as a choke point, but he’s in bad shape. I can see cuts everywhere on his torso as he swings again and again at the other Gleaners trying to get to him. His movements are sluggish. He is not getting away.
Even as I watch, the one he is fighting lashes out again and this time, Duodecim doesn’t try to avoid the strike. Instead he deflects the blade upward from his chest.
Allows it to drive straight into his mouth.
“Ngh.” I groan and hold my hands to my head, pain searing through it. The connection’s gone. The Will I imbued in him returned.
Duodecim won’t be giving my identity away. But his counterparts will surely be about to conduct some sort of search.
There’s no time for alternatives. No choice.
Before Ahmose can stop me, I stride forward and grasp the bars.
There is heat and light buzzing through me, making my insides shiver, unpleasant but not overtly painful. The disorienting, flickering impression that I’m outside again, hovering in mid-air with the desert far below.
With a grunt, I focus enough to pull. The mutalis-coated gate opens and I stumble back, shuddering as I release it.
“Come on.” I mutter the words, head still clearing but focused enough to remember the urgency of our situation. “Come on.”
Ahmose is looking at me as if I am a monster. Or perhaps a god. Reverence and fear in every line.
But when I slip through the narrow opening and urge him to follow, he does.
The gap is barely wide enough for a person and Ahmose slides past with intelligent caution, looking queasy as he nears the bars.
I reach out and steady him, pulling him through, then grit my teeth and pull the gate closed again.
The sensation is no less pleasant the second time, but it’s not crippling.
The sound of footsteps echoes from the tunnel we just left. Ahmose needs no encouragement to flee after me around the corner, the two of us moving as quickly and silently as we can.
We race down the stairs, and into the vast, unfamiliar expanse of Duat.