Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

I am a dead man . But it was still funny.

Osgan stared at him, shivering. 'Thalric, we've got to get out of here,' he pleaded.

Thalric's grin was keen as a razor. 'Of course we do,' he replied. 'You'll know some low dive where a couple of foreigners can hide up. I doubt there's a drinking den in this city you haven't tasted.'

'I know … places.' Osgan struggled to stand, and Thalric helped him up, slinging the man's good arm over his own shoulder.

'Then let's go,' Thalric said. 'Suddenly I have no appointments.'

All the leaden chains of doubt had just clattered to the ground with Osgan's halting words. From the bewildered ambassador he had become the hunted agent in a hostile city. It was a role he felt infinitely more comfortable with.

For as long as she could stave off sleeping, she had not slept. She knew that, in her dreams, the other Khanaphes was waiting for her: Petri Coggen, passable scholar, graduate of the Great College, Beetle-kinden student of the past, and fugitive.

She did not run, this fugitive. She hid in the Collegiate embassy — no, in the embassy they had painted over as Collegiate, although it had the marks of the old Moth tyranny underneath. Being a historian was becoming a curse, now that the accumulated centuries of Khanaphes, the city where time had died, were rising up to choke her with the dust of ages.

She needed help, so she had gone to Che — but Che had her own worries. The other academics regarded Petri with disdain. She could not speak to them more than five words without stammering and shaking. They did not understand . They looked at the carvings and the statues and the colonnades, and they thought it was simply the past. They did not understand that it was all still alive , the truth of it lurking beneath the surface, glimpsed only from the corner of the eye.

She was seeing a lot from the corner of her eye these days, after nights of resistance to sleep. The world was alive with motion as the ghosts of old Khanaphes whirled about her. Even when the servants came to her with food, she shied away. She could not be sure if they were real or not. The servants of five centuries ago would have looked no different, she knew.

She needed help, but there was nobody here who could, and if she ventured out on to the streets …

She had not left her room in two days. The encroaching taint of history arisen had crept even into the other parts of the embassy. The net of Khanaphes was closing on her.

Sleep was closing on her … She pricked herself with a knife. She stripped the rugs away and sat on the cold floor. She twisted her fingers in turn, searching for pain enough to keep her awake. She considered driving the blunt blade through her foot. She held it poised, quivering, ready to ram it down. She heard her own sobbing breath loud in her ears.

She could not do it. She lacked the courage or the resolve or whatever mad quality it was that enabled people to mutilate their own bodies. She let the knife fall clattering to the stone floor.

The claws of sleep rose again for her, eager to hook into her mind, and she had no defences left. None.

In her dream, Petri Coggen was outside, alone in the midnight streets of Khanaphes. It was the same dream, or another segment of the same dream, as it thrust itself slowly upwards from the depths of her unconscious. Each dream was another lurching progression further forward. Each dream took her deeper into the city.

Now she had arrived.

The Scriptora rose behind her, a wall of darkness. She reached back to feel the stone-carved scales on the columns that fronted it. The night was chilly, the moon veiled in ragged cloud. The air was damp with the breath of the river.

In her dream she could feel her awakening fear like the pounding on a distant door. This was the hub of her nightmares. This was what kept her behind the safe walls of the embassy. Khanaphes was out to get her .

In the end, Che had not believed her. Che had not even given much thought to the absent Master Kadro. The ambassador had other matters on her mind. Petri had not even tried confiding in the other academics. She had just been clinging on, day to day, waiting for when they would pack up and set sail for Collegium once again, because surely they could not deny her passage then.

And each night the dreams returned, and each night they grew worse, until now.

She turned away from the hulking presence of the Scriptora to face the steps of the pyramid. The pale statues at its summit regarded her with an impartial coldness. She felt her feet begin to climb, taking her with them. It was her dream, but she had no control of herself. I don't want to see what lies within . She knew with a passion that whatever secret Kadro had unearthed would prove fatal, that a mere glance would seal her doom, would cut her off for ever from the comforting world of Collegium and the Lowlands. Still, her feet kept climbing, step by step by step. She could hear her waking fears wailing, feel them battering at the inside of her mind. In the dream, in her dream-mind, she remained placid, even content, to be taking this journey. In the dream the never-ending carvings almost made sense, and the city around her was rich and vibrant with a life that the waking mind could not see. So it was in the dream, but at the same time she knew it was a lie.

And she stood atop the pyramid, but fought the impulse that would have her look down. The shaft was at her very toes, while either side of her those majestic and inhuman statues kept their eternal watch.

Her head was being drawn down: the dream wanted her to see. She teetered on the edge of waking, the facade of her dream cracking. Don't want to … I don't want to … Because there was something down there, and it was rising up.

She woke with a sharp start, as though she had been slapped. For a moment the dream still clung to her, its sights, sounds, the very texture of the air confusing her. Where am I?

She froze. The air around her was chill and damp, kissed by the Jamail. She was high up, and the cloud-strung moon's light settled on little, but it settled on the pale stone of the statues looming across from her. They had always looked outwards before, but now one was turned towards her — and it was smiling slightly as if in amusement at her folly.

She screamed, a short and ugly sound, as she felt the sudden rush of air from the pit at her very feet — as if something was rising from the depths .

She stumbled backwards, abruptly without sure footing, tripping back towards the descending steps of the pyramid. She reached out for a support, grasped the arm of one of the statues, expecting cold stone. What she touched was slick and slippery, not stone but flesh.

She screamed again and let go.

On this day, the one hundred and seventy-fifth day of the seven hundred and forty-second year from the founding of the Bounteous City, were the tallies made of all peoples who dwell under the hand of the Masters, happy are we to stand in their shadow …

Also in this year the harvest was of unexpected richness, so that the stores of the city were increased by three parts in one hundred for the coming years. The word of the Masters has cautioned that our storehouses must remain full, for there are lean years foreseen in the east …

Also in this year …

'Bella Cheerwell?'

The words — her own name — startled her from her reverie. Che blinked, stared at the wall she was crouching before. For a moment the hieroglyphs only marched their incomprehensible procession before her eyes. Then they swam and twisted, as though suddenly viewed through tears. Comprehension came as naturally as breathing, and she saw: Also in this year did the First Soldier of Khanaphes take to the West River Plains so as to turn aside the advances of the Many of Nem …