Heretic of Set
Page 26
The energy struck the ancient rings.
Joined with their own energies.
Infected them.
The rings exploded.
A wet, red mist splattered across Anok’s face.
Dejal screamed. He screamed and screamed again, and he kept on screaming.
Around them the entire pyramid trembled, the one last indignity added to all the others of that day. For thousands of years it had stood unshaken.
Today, it would fall.
Anok stepped calmly forward, standing before Dejal.
He was on his knees.
His arms were gone, nothing left but charred stumps, too burned even to bleed, that waved from his shoulders when he screamed.
“You have taken Neska’s rings, Dejal. Now you know his curse, twice over! What spells will you cast now, without hands to cast them?”
Dejal managed to quiet his screams. For a moment, as loose stone and dust rained around them, he could only gasp and sob. Then he looked up at Anok, his eyes desperate and forlorn. “Mercy! Show me mercy, brother! I beg you! Kill me! Make it quick!” His body writhed, his head sagged.
Perhaps he was trying to bow. Perhaps he was simply trying not to fall down.
Anok didn’t care.
“Mercy like you showed Sheriti, Dejal? I saw her body, saw the marks there, saw the torture you inflicted on her. There was no mercy there.”
“It was my father’s idea, not mine! It was Ramsa Aál that killed her, not I. I simply brought her to him!”
“As though that makes you less guilty? It was you who led her from the safety of her home with your lies. Did you use my name, Dejal? Did you tell her that I needed her? Did you make me part of her murder as well?”
The only answer from Dejal was to flinch, his eyes forlorn, like a whipped dog.
“If the others had their hand in killing her as well, take comfort in knowing that they, too, will die, with as much suffering as I can arrange.” The temple began to collapse around them. “But we were friends once, so I will lift my hands no more to harm you. But don’t look to me for mercy.” He turned and began to walk away. “Death will take you, in its own time.”
Dejal started to scream again. The noise echoed up the long tunnel and out the arched entrance, beyond which Teferi and Fallon waited.
Behind him, the entrance tunnel collapsed, the little structure on top collapsed into a pile of rubble, and a stone as big as a house rolled down the side of the pyramid and landed with a ground-shaking thud fifty paces to their left.
They ran, untying the camels and, leading them, scrambled up the sandy slope away from the pyramid.
As they reached the crest, a low rumble came from behind them. They turned back to see the pyramid falling in on itself, sand running back into the pit to swallow its crumbling stones.
They mounted the camels and trotted them a thousand paces or more before turning back to see.
The pyramid was gone, swallowed by sand, only a towering column of rising dust to show where it had been.
The watched it for a while, until even the dust was gone, and the dunes turned orange in the light of the setting sun.
Teferi looked at Anok. “You found what you needed?”
He nodded. “I did, and I am whole again.”
“What,” asked Fallon, “happened to Dejal?”
Anok gazed at the sand, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly through his nose. “He betrayed us, and he has paid the price for his betrayal.”
He looked over at Teferi. “My friend, there are things we must talk of, secrets I have long hidden from you.
“But not today. After we return to Kheshatta. And I hope then, you will find it in your heart to forgive me.”
He looked back at the mountains. “There is still light. Let us ride while we still can.”
They made their way back across the sand. He rode up next to Fallon, looked at her, and smiled sadly. “You are going to be so angry,” he said, “when you learn about the treasure you just missed.”
ANOK LAY ON his blanket, looking up at the black sea of stars, and wondered from which of them Neska might have come. A falling star swept across his field of view, flared green, and was gone.
He heard a noise, someone moving in the darkness, and Fallon slipped in silently next to him, curling herself along his side.
Apparently she had forgiven him for the lost treasure.
He didn’t complain, only thought of Sheriti and sighed.
If only Teferi would be half as forgiving—a quarter, an eighth—they might get through this.
That was one thing. There were many more.
He had fought back madness and corruption, and now he had a weapon against it.
But he was not free of it.
He knew now, he never would be.
But there was hope. Hope that justice for those murdered might be served. Hope that the tangled secrets of his past might finally be unraveled, his lost sister found.
Hope was all he had.
But here, under a crystal desert sky, with a good woman at his side, hope would be enough.