I barely looked at what lived on the other side. I glimpsed red-gold light, what looked like sunlight streaming down through dark fronds of green and black. Gold snakes with flicking tongues hung from branches that framed the edges of the opening.
I stepped through with the empty goblet still clutched in one hand.
I’d expected daylight,despite the nighttime where I was, because of the reddish-gold glow.
It wasn’t daylight that greeted me.
I stumbled into a cavernous, underground space, feeling off-balance as I landed on a much different stone floor than the one I’d just left behind. I gazed up at a ceiling so high, I questioned whether the walls around me ended anywhere at all.
The reddish-gold light turned out to be fire.
Flames rose up out of a stone, square pit in the center of the floor. A black plume of smoke tunneled upwards in rippling spirals. I glanced over my shoulder at a long, stone passage that led down to the chamber where I stood. A strip of night sky shone at the end of that steep ramp, filled with so many stars it scarcely looked real.
Itwasn’treal, I reminded myself. This was all a construct, a testament to Forsooth’s magic, his ability to bend light and infuse it with living presence.
Eye of Ra, it looked so real, though.
Detailed carvings decorated the stone to either side of the doorway, next to tall statues of Anubis and Osiris, and what looked like an Ancient Egyptian king.
I was in an Egyptian temple.
I scanned the rows of hieroglyphs, wondering if these vortices were puzzles as much as artificial environments to explore. It would be so like Forsooth to send us somewhere to teach us something, or to test our skills. Unfortunately, I could only read a handful of the hieroglyphs, not enough to guess the temple’s exact purpose.
I stepped closer to the flames, and a green circle appeared on the stone floor, marked with black symbols. A man walked into my sight, appearing out of nowhere. He wore only a loincloth, a mask, and a long, beaded belt. The mask covered his face and head, and I guessed it must be Osiris from the green skin, painted eyes, and curved beard. His muscular body shone in the firelight as he held up a large stone bowl.
I was still staring when he poured the contents of the bowl over his chest and shoulders.
The red liquid ran down him in thick, stringy clumps.
It was blood. Worse somehow, the blood looked dead to me. It smelled dead.
I stumbled back a few feet in my high heels.
The man didn’t seem to notice me at all.
He set the emptied, blood-streaked bowl on a low table by the fire, fell to his knees, and pulled a curved knife from his belt. He began chanting out words in a low, gravelly voice. As his voice grew louder, the colors of the fire changed from red and orange to gold and green. The fire doubled in height, and the masked man chanted louder.
As his chants reached a kind of peak, he began carving hieroglyphs into his own chest. I stared, horrified as he cutnearly an inch into his own skin and muscle. I saw the muscle pull the flesh open, even as something in the knife blackened it.
The smell of burning flesh filled my nose.
It must have hurt him, but the man didn’t flinch or cry out. His voice grew harder, more guttural. Magic swirled around him, filled with increasingly detailed images.
I glimpsed bloody sacrifices, murders in the swirling smoke, battles, swords clashing, beheaded enemies, the ground soaked with blood. Worse than any of what the smoke showed me, I realized I recognized the marks on the man’s chest. They were the same hieroglyphs I’d seen glowing under Bones’s skin when his magic overloaded.
The realization made me feel even sicker.
Had someone done this to him? His own father? Had Lord Bones mutilated his son with his own hand, or had he simply ordered Bones do it to himself?
The man finished his grotesque carvings.
Gripping the knife, he began to chant louder, holding up his arms.
Blood ran down his hands, wrists, forearms, chest, and abdomen. Magical images continued to form in the smoke and, increasingly, the same man’s face appeared. I saw him driving a chariot, his sword flashing in the sun. I saw him stood over bloody battlefields, streaked in blood, perfumed and lounging inside pavilions, decked in gold and draping robes, bathing in stone pools, having sex with a servant in a bed with white sheets, eating at a long table, riding in a boat decked with flowers down a long, blue river.
The chants grew louder, more harsh, more fierce.
Something new began to materialize in front of him.
