Breaking Hel

by Miles Cameron

Genres: Epic Fantasy; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

Synopsis

Before iron helmets and steel swords, when dragons roamed the world, was an age of bronze and stone, when the Gods walked the earth, and people lived in terror. In this era a scribe, a warlord, a dancer, a mute insect and a child should have no chance against the might of the bickering gods and their cruel games. But the gods themselves are old, addicted to their own games of power, and now their fates may lie in the hands of mere mortals . . .


The third in this original, visceral epic series weaving together the mythologies of a dozen pantheons of gods and heroes to create something new and magical, this tale of the revolt against the tyranny which began in Against All Gods is a must-read from a master of the fantasy genre.

Praise for Miles Cameron:

'Utterly, utterly brilliant. A masterclass in how to write modern fantasy - world building, characters, plot and pacing, all perfectly blended. Miles Cameron is at the top of his game' John Gwynne, author of The Faithful and the Fallen series

'Cold Iron is fantastic. It shimmers like a well-honed sword blade' Anna Smith Spark, author of The Court of Broken Knives

'Promising historical fantasy debut featuring an expansive cast, an engaging plot, and a detailed eye for combat' The Ranting Dragon on The Red Knight

'Literate, intelligent, and well-throughout . . . a pleasingly complex and greatly satisfying novel' SFF World on The Red Knight

Release date: August 8, 2024

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 400

Sample

Western Narmer

Zos

Zos lay beside the Great Lady of the High House. She had sent her maidservants away, and they were both perspiring freely in the humid heat. The delta had gone from cold and wet to hot and wet in a couple of hours, and Zos had seldom been so …

… in love.

Every time he looked at Maritaten, his heart raced as if he was preparing to leap a bull.

She rolled towards him, leaning on one elbow. If nudity concerned her at all, she showed no sign of it, and while he looked at her body below her magical lapis necklace, she, despite the unleashed passion of the last hour, was now all business.

‘We don’t have the troops to defeat the army Enkul-Anu has sent after us,’ she said. ‘And I’m running out of running room.’

‘Unless you leave Thais to the Jekers and sail away,’ Zos said. ‘Run north to Kanun. That’s one of the reasons we took it.’ Strategy came to him as naturally as lovemaking, and her switch of topics only reminded him of her brilliance.

‘I will not abandon one of my cities to the Jekers, unless I have no other choice,’ she said. She placed a hand on his scarred chest and smiled. ‘And now that you seem to be healed …’

He felt desire flash through him, and he was aware, as an old player in the game of life, that she was manipulating him. She did it as naturally as breathing.

‘You want me to defeat Axe and Anenome?’ he asked.

‘Can you?’ she asked.

He rolled towards her, but only to look her in the eye. ‘Barring a miracle, no,’ he said. ‘At least not in the short run. But as I said to the council, the odds of them actually getting here to fight aren’t that high. For the moment, we have the water, and the delta is mostly water.’

‘Can you defeat the Jekers?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, they have their god handy, and they’ll cost us in blood and in expertise, and when we’ve beaten them we won’t have much left.’ He shrugged. ‘Or that’s my read. Your best are ten times as good as the Jekers, but the Jekers have about five times as many warriors.’

She bit her lip slightly. ‘That’s what Ak-Arrina said, too,’ she muttered. ‘And Horat.’

Zos ignored her reference to Ak-Arrina, as he didn’t like the man. ‘Horat is a first-rate planner,’ he said.

‘And my cousin?’ she asked, purring.

‘Wants your throne,’ Zos said. ‘He’s one of those very dangerous people who hides his own plotting from himself. He’d like you to die in battle or something, so he can step in, heroically.’

‘I don’t like to hear that,’ she said. ‘He has been loyal through everything.’

Zos rolled back, understanding that she didn’t want to discuss her cousin’s loyalties. ‘Fine. Tell me about Narmer’s history of ruling queens.’

‘You bastard.’ She leaned over him. ‘You know a fair amount about Narmer for a sell-sword.’ They both knew that Narmer had been ruled by women just thrice in a thousand years.

‘My beautiful Great Lady of the High House,’ he said, curtained in her perfumed hair. ‘Staying alive as a sell-sword requires extensive knowledge of the politics of the god-kings. Narmer is the greatest country on the wheel of earth.’

She was looking into his eyes. ‘And … ?’

‘I’m no longer a sell-sword,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the leaders of the revolt of mortals against the gods. We’re playing a long game, and you and I, my dear Great Lady, are not the most important pieces on the board.’

‘You are impudent,’ she said. ‘I am the Great Lady of the High House of Narmer. I am not a piece on a Senet board.’ But he heard in her voice that she understood exactly. The words were defensive. ‘I want to evade the Jekers and move into the city. I want the grain, too.’

‘Grain?’

‘Thais is the centre of the delta grain collection. The storehouse there is enormous. That’s where we keep the grain store for long years of famine. I want it.’

He pondered that. ‘I didn’t know,’ he admitted.

‘Even our small army eats a fortune in grain every day. Chariot horses and men and women …’ She paused, rolled over, and took a sip of wine. ‘And, any day, Enkul-Anu could find our river ships and end our river power.’

Zos lay on his back, staring at the ceiling of the tent. ‘I want to use the Sky Chariot to contact Era. She is the main effort, at least to me. She needs to know the state of play here in the delta.’ Zos was blunt, because Maritaten liked straight talk. ‘But I like the idea of moving into the city, even if we can’t stay there.’

‘Agreed. We’ll have to escape. Preferably with the population and the grain.’ She spoke decisively. ‘Taking the whole populace of the city with us. I will tell that part to my council later.’

There was a great deal to love in the queen of Narmer.

‘I’m in,’ he agreed.

‘I need you to do something first,’ she said. ‘Something to brush the Storm God’s army back. Something to show that the queen has chosen her lover wisely and keep Ak-Arrina and Mari-Ye at bay for a few weeks.’

She brushed his lips with hers.

‘What you want,’ he said, stroking her bare back, ‘is a diversion. It’s becoming my speciality.’

Kypri, off the coast of Narmer

Kursag

Kursag was licking his wounds. He hated to think of it that way, but he had taken wounds, and even with the prayers and invocations of his horde of Jekers, he needed time to heal. He sat in his cave, considering the state of play so far.

He’d tried to murder his father, and he’d killed the old God of War instead, which was not altogether a loss. In fact, given a few days to create a narrative, he was very close to deciding it was his intention all along. He was the destroyer! He’d destroyed the God of War.

Definitely a victory.

The fight around the city … Well, he’d lost a great many Jekers, but then, they were basically cattle, and there were more – many more – where they’d come from. He regretted the loss of the ships; he’d have to come up with something to replace them. But the ruined former nations and tribes of Hannigalbat and Umeria were full of desperate human sheep looking for something to worship, and he had agents there, raising fresh hordes.

And the city of Thais would fall any day. And then … he’d have more followers. More cattle. More worship!

And more destruction.

I’m winning, he thought. And even as he thought it, a great gout of mana hit him like a flood of water in a storm, and he was filled with power. Somewhere, some new sheep had joined his cause.

I need to get that Sky Chariot. Whoever has it is pounding my Jekers. That should be easy enough – another easy win.

And I am winning.

Up river from Thais, Narmer

Axe and Anenome

Axe looked over his lover’s sand map. ‘You still think we can trap the Narmerians against the Jekers?’

Anenome was neither as huge nor as old as his partner, but he was by far the handsomer of the pair, and today he wore an armour of gold-decorated bronze scales that flashed in the sunlight. ‘Worth a try,’ he said.

‘I don’t like their having the flying chariot,’ Axe said. ‘They’ve scouted us, counted our spears, watched us move.’

Anenome nodded. ‘Agreed. But …’ He looked around, as if expecting to be overheard. ‘But you know the cost of delay.’

‘I know the cost of defeat, too,’ Axe grumbled.

‘What cost of defeat?’ asked a booming voice.

‘Shit,’ Anenome spat.

The wings of Enkul-Anu’s demon guard blew the sand map to dust and filled the air.

Enkul-Anu settled onto a carpet provided by a pair of demons. ‘What cost of defeat?’ he asked.

There were very few things that Axe feared. He was huge: much taller than most men, with a forehead like the prow of a ship – thick bone that had resisted several attempts to penetrate it with maces or axes. It was his ability to survive an axe blow to the head that had earned him his name.

‘We’re not facing idiots,’ he said. ‘Majesty,’ he added with a bow of his great head.

Enkul-Anu didn’t explode in rage. Instead, he nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Most of the fucking idiots are on our side.’

Anenome laughed.

‘So …’ the Great God said. ‘What are you looking at?’

Axe didn’t mention the hour he’d spent making a sand map of the delta. ‘We think we can trap Maritaten against the Jekers.’ He looked at Anenome.

The smaller man smiled like a horse-seller. ‘She’s smart and she gets good advice, but she’s running out of space to retreat.’

‘But you don’t like it?’ Enkul-Anu was speaking to the giant.

Axe made a face. ‘No, Great God, I don’t. That fucking flying chariot, pardon my language.’

Enkul-Anu might have been seen to smile. ‘I have heard the word “fucking” before,’ he vouchsafed.

‘The chariot means they know what we’re doing,’ Axe continued. He sketched the positions back in the sand with his spear point. ‘We’re here. Maritaten’s here. The Jekers, whatever came through the last fight, are here, in an arc around the city.’

Enkul-Anu’s form overtopped even Axe, and he shaded the sketch as he bent down. ‘If you were quick,’ he said, ‘and went up the coast …’

Anenome, who had proposed the exact same plan an hour earlier, said, ‘What a brilliant plan, O God, my God.’

‘You catch her against the city walls. Either the Jekers finish her, or she escapes into the city and we have her bottled up.’ Enkul-Anu looked at them. ‘This field army is all we have, boys. I’m going to need to end this quickly, because there are other …’ He looked out over the delta. ‘Other fish to fry. Other rebellions we need to crush. Have you had any problems with the Bright People?’

Axe grunted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Too damp here, Lord.’

Enkul-Anu snorted. ‘I need a win, boys. I can spare six demons to keep the chariot off you. Bashmu here will see to it.’

He rose into the air, his wings obliterating the new sketch in the sand. ‘Get me a win,’ he roared at them, and flew away.

A pair of demons somewhat ruined the effect by stooping to roll up the carpet.

‘Why do we always have to do this shit?’ grumbled one.

‘If someone hadn’t been late for duty …’ the other spat, and they leapt into the air.

Axe watched them until they vanished into the clouds. Anenome watched with him.

‘See what I mean?’ he asked. ‘We need to get this done.’

Axe grunted, glanced at his lover, shook his great head. ‘Something’s wrong.’

Anenome nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘We need to win this.’

‘Sure,’ Axe said. ‘But I’m thinking about an exit strategy.’

Anenome picked up his magnificently plumed helmet. ‘You think it’s that bad?’

‘I want you to think about the Great God’s demeanour just now,’ Axe said.

Anenome took a deep breath, as if to speak, and let it out. ‘Fuck.’

‘Exactly.’ Axe picked up his great war hammer. ‘All right, let’s beat Maritaten first.’

Anenome put a hand on his arm. ‘If you are thinking what I am, maybe we shouldn’t be in a hurry to beat her.’

Axe shook his great head. ‘No. We need a win to buy time to look at the board, and figure out who the pieces are and who is moving them.’

Anenome grinned. ‘You are not just a pretty face.’

Thais, Narmer Delta

Maritaten

Slipping her army into Thais proved easier than even Horat had imagined. Zos moved the fleet to attack the Jekers’ remaining ships, and they responded with everything they had, chasing him across the delta. She’d landed Ak-Arrina’s charioteers and the Guard of Swords and all her bureaucrats and soldiers.

All it took was extensive planning and luck, and Maritaten had both.

In a day, even as smoke rose five parasangs away, where Zos was busily burning the remnants of the once feared Jeker fleet, Maritaten was ensconced in the Winter Palace of Thais. Mari-Ye was opening the Temple of Arrina, and Ak-Arrina had taken command of the siege. She added the garrison to her army and received the cheers of the populace.

The day after, the Jekers closed around them again. She ignored them; she had other things to do. But she did go, in person, to look at the grain store. It was one of the largest stone structures in all of Narmer: a massive structure, part underground, part above ground, supported by columns as big as the pylons of the temples, with a roof of Dendrownan oak and cedar, covered in red clay tiles to make it fireproof. It had taken damage from the various magical bombardments of the siege, but not much.

Then she summoned her chancellor. She turned and motioned to Tudhal, captain of the Guard of Swords. ‘Clear the hall,’ she said.

Tudhal smiled and bowed. ‘You heard the Great Lady,’ he roared at the courtiers.

Maritaten smiled to herself. She was under siege in the last city of Narmer still in her hands, food was rationed, and they were living in a swamp, and still she had courtiers – senior bureaucrats, godborn nobles and a handful of adventurers. She wondered how desperate they were, and what plots they were hatching, but they were useful yet.

‘Great Lady,’ Hehet said, approaching her throne, which had been set up in the great hall of the Winter Palace. The frescoes here were curiously alien; Maritaten thought they’d been painted by artists from Noa, with a superb – if terrifying – octopus guarding one whole wall in an underwater seascape. It made her uncomfortable, but then, if it kept audiences short, she was in favour of it.

‘Hehet,’ she said, ‘I need you to track all the ships available to us, and how much grain they can carry. Then I need you to organise the movement of two thirds of the grain in the great store. I need this done in the greatest possible secrecy.’

Hehet made a note on her wax tablet. ‘Yes, Great Lady,’ she said, as if this was an everyday request.

Maritaten nodded. ‘Excellent. You have perhaps two days.’

‘Yes, Great Lady.’ Hehet, usually imperturbable, was seen to wince.

Maritaten leaned down from her throne. ‘Hehet, I know how hard you work. I promise you that this is an essential act for the salvation of Narmer.’

Hehet answered with a half-smile. ‘Where is the grain bound?’

Maritaten leaned back. She considered Hehet for a moment and decided that if she couldn’t trust her junior chamberlain, she was lost anyway. ‘Kanun,’ she said.

Hehet nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Your wish is my command, Great Lady.’

Maritaten nodded. ‘My thanks, Hehet. I hereby promote you to the first rank of nobility, with all your family.’

Hehet fell to her knees.

Maritaten smiled. Cost to me, nothing. Still, I wouldn’t be here without her.

‘There will be more rewards, when I have something more concrete to give,’ she promised. ‘And Hehet?’

‘Mistress?’

‘Send Prince Ahaz to me.’

The prince of Yahud must have been in an antechamber; he appeared so quickly that Maritaten had no time to grow bored.

He knelt. He wasn’t a subservient man, and he wasn’t handsome; he was tall, heavily bearded, thin and ascetic-looking, as if he was a prophet, not a prince. He wasn’t particularly good at palace etiquette and he’d declined several offers from various factions at her court. He wasn’t particularly renowned as a warrior, and yet his actions had been pivotal to saving her right wing in the disaster at the Battle of the Sands.

She liked him. ‘Noble Ahaz,’ she said. ‘Can I trust you?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Great Lady.’

‘You Yahudis worship different gods, and you do not believe that the Great House is a line of gods, and yet you follow me.’ She didn’t smile. This was something that interested her.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘We … worship differently. It is true. But we are loyal.’

She nodded. ‘I am sending a great part of the grain store of Narmer to Kanun,’ she said. ‘I intend to send you with the fleet. I need you to take control of your city and hold it for me. I intend,’ she lowered her voice, ‘to retreat there, and put the northern arm of the Iteru between me and my enemies while we recover. Will you go? Will you be my vicar in Kanun?’

Ahaz pulled on his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

‘I sense a “but” … ?’

‘Great Lady, the grain store is enormous, and I will have to store it.’ He shrugged. ‘My wife, Jezebar, will help. I have an idea …’ He shook his head. ‘I will see it done.’

‘Good. Take your people – I will send some of my own soldiers. The fleet will, Arrina willing, be here in a day or two to fetch you.’

He bowed. ‘I’ll get it done,’ he growled.

She smiled.

When Ahaz was gone, Maritaten nodded to Tudhal. ‘I have an appointment at the Temple of Arrina,’ she said. ‘Tell the rest of today’s schedule to come back tomorrow.’

Temple of Arrina, Thais, Narmer

Timut-Imri and Maritaten

When he was casting something really difficult, Timut-Imri always performed his salutations and invocations if he could. He hadn’t survived three centuries by being a creature of habit, but he found the rituals and the ceremonies to be centring, relaxing, meditative. All the things you needed when you were performing really powerful magic.

He chanted the words of the Great Hymn to Arrina, standing in a casting circle inlaid in the floor of the great Temple of Arrina in Thais.

How manifold it is, what thou hast made!They are hidden from the face of all.O Great Goddess, like whom there is no other!Thou didst create the world according to thy desire,Whilst thou wert alone: all men, cattle, and wild beasts,Whatever is on Earth, going upon feet,And what is on high, flying with its wings.

Behind him, Maritaten chanted the hymn as well. Her soprano made a counterpoint to his bass, and their voices, intertwined, rose to the heavens as an invocation of the first order. Timut-Imri felt a stirring in the aether and he expanded his senses, but he detected no watchers from the Immortals.

When you have dawned, we live.When you set, we die;You yourself are lifetime, one lives by you.All eyes are on your beauty until you set.All labour ceases when you rest in the west;When you rise you stir everyone,Every leg is on the move since you founded the Earth.You rouse them for your people who came from your body.

Outside the casting circle, Mari-Ye, Ak-Arrina and a dozen other powerful men stood in postures of deep reverence, but as the hymn ended, they rose to their feet and shuffled away, departing into the brilliant sunlight that shone between the massive pylons flanking the entrance.

The High Priest of Arrina was last. He turned, made a deep obeisance, and backed out into the light, leaving his Great Lady and her magician.

‘You don’t get your power from the gods,’ Maritaten said. ‘And yet, here we are in a temple.’

Timut-Imri was much more imposing in his long black robe than naked on the deck of her ship. His grey eyebrows twitched, and he smiled.

‘I like temples,’ he said. ‘They help me concentrate. Also, Arrina is – or was – less of a disaster than most of the other gods.’

‘I believe she has been exiled to the Outer Darkness,’ Maritaten said cautiously.

Timut-Imri nodded. ‘And that may be why she’s less of a pain in the arse. Here, hold this.’ The old man handed her a gold and silver censer.

‘I’m the Great Lady of the High House,’ she said. ‘I’m not an acolyte.’

‘You want an amulet for your lover, don’t you?’ the magician asked. ‘One that will stand up to the gods?’

She sighed.

‘And you want it to be secret?’ the magician asked. ‘Or shall we have some servants in to help out?’

‘No one talks to me this way,’ she said. No one but Zos and Mari-Ye.

His glance suggested that he wasn’t going to change his mind.

‘Very well,’ she said, taking the censer.

‘Swing it hard, side to side. There. If it stops making smoke, put more resin on it. Like that. Exactly.’

Maritaten nodded. ‘What does the resin do, in the spell?’

‘Nothing,’ the man said. ‘I like the smell. Now let me concentrate.’

As he spoke, the rising sun crossed the threshold and a single finger of light began to creep along the nave between the pylons, brilliant in its intensity, its contrast increased by the darkness under the heavy columns on either side.

Timut-Imri arranged a jewel in a complex mount on the priest’s podium, sighted along his staff, and began to write signs and sigils on the smooth slate of the floor with a silver stylus that barely left a mark.

Then he placed a small lapis scarab in the centre of the circle, and around it he wrote more sigils, his stylus moving quickly.

The long finger of the sun came across the slate floor like an arm of a rising tide.

‘I don’t see how you can draw power without a god,’ Maritaten said.

Timut-Imri could be seen to count on his fingers. He checked a sigil, and looked up from where he knelt on the floor. ‘The gods are just middlemen,’ he said. ‘Praying to Enkul-Anu or Sypa for power is like buying Mykoan wool from a Hundred Cities merchant. All I do is cut out the middleman. Now hush.’

No one had said ‘hush’ to Maritaten since she became the Lady of the High House of Narmer. Before that, as a slave in the harem of the Lord of the High House, she had often been hushed, and she smiled slightly and whirled her censer so that aromatic smoke billowed.

‘We are astrologically sound – we are in the correct house, the hour is propitious …’ Maritaten could tell that the man was running a checklist, like a scribe loading a boat. ‘The sun looks right – the lens is the focus, the calculations are accurate, the repeat matched.’ He looked at her. ‘I had to recalculate everything for the comet.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I’m ready.’

‘You do all this each time?’ she asked.

‘It’s why I’m alive.’ He walked carefully to avoid smudging any of his lines. ‘You can’t be too careful with magic. Any error and … bang, you’re dead. Now, care to join me?’

‘I’m inside the circle,’ she said.

‘To see the casting, you’ll have to be inside my head. Remember what I’ve been teaching you. Step lively, now.’

Maritaten took him at his word, concentrated, and …

Was inside his head.

‘Welcome!’ Timut-Imri said. He was a great deal younger, and quite handsome in a red-bronze-skinned, muscular way. He was sitting on a throne of red granite and she was sitting on an ivory stool.

‘I am the Great Lady of the High House,’ she said.

‘I am absolute master inside my own head,’ he said, and she smiled.

‘True enough. Even the lowest slave can be master inside themselves,’ she said. ‘I was.’

‘Now watch! He spread his arms wide. He was wearing a purple heton more magnificent than anything she’d ever seen, but then, they were in the aethereal dream realm, and everything was the creation of their minds.

The inside of Timut-Imri’s mind turned out to strongly resemble a temple of Narmer: huge pylons at the entrance, heavy, squat columns defining a long, narrow nave, and a dais on which he sat. Every surface was covered in sigils – runes, hieroglyphs, a dozen languages and scripts – but the floor of the nave was the same as the floor of the real temple outside, and the sun came up the nave like a tongue of fire and licked at the crystal lens set on a tripod. Maritaten had never imagined, in all her lessons, this combination of the aethereal and the real in a single memory palace.

Timut-Imri was powerful.

‘Aktin!’ he said.

Every sigil he’d inscribed on the floor of the real temple burst into blue fire.

Maritaten almost dropped the censer. She’d never seen anything like this. Staffs becoming snakes, yes. Letters of fire burned on the floor, no.

The rays of the sun flared in the crystal, and a beam of blue-white light reached out for the scarab. It didn’t move like light, though. It seemed slower, almost cautious.

‘You don’t want him protected once,’ Timut-Imri said. ‘You want this thing to work over and over, so it has to release all this power a little at a time. And that’s complicated. Anything that works against death is very, very complicated.’

‘Because of Gul?’ she asked.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes and no, Great Lady. Death itself is complicated, and very powerful. It is a natural force. Everything dies – you and I, the gods, the animals, trees, head lice. Death is rather … beyond … the gods.’

‘But Gul?’ she asked. It was surprisingly comfortable inside the sorcerer’s head. And he was teaching her so much …

If she could believe him.

It is a curious by-product of being in revolt against the gods that I crave knowledge about them that I never really needed before.

Timut-Imri was reading glyphs from the apparently quartzite walls. ‘Gul is not like the other gods,’ he said in a pedantic voice, as if he was lecturing students.

I guess he isn’t, at that.

‘Gul is unique, and I don’t exactly know why. You know that most of the old gods were …’ He frowned. ‘Just people with powers. Like me. Like you, if it comes to that.’

Maritaten writhed a little. ‘Perhaps.’

Timut-Imri smiled. ‘Trust me on this. Then, an aeon or so ago, a new pantheon appeared from outside. Ancient records, including some right here in Narmer, suggest that this has happened before.’

Timut-Imri had begun lecturing, and he reminded her of her first dance mistress, who could go on a bit on any subject. Deni-Ah had been convinced that mastery of dance provided her with knowledge of every other subject.

‘Come to think of it …’ Timut-Imri said, and Maritaten realised she’d missed something. ‘Come to think of it, there was a comet then, too.’

The sorcerer was silent for a long time. And then he said, ‘Regardless, these “gods” were alien to us—’

‘Enkul-Anu!’ she said.

‘Exactly. Gul came last – at least, that’s what my research has shown. And his – or rather, their – powers are different, as are those of their consort, Urkigul.’ He shrugged. ‘She is the most self-effacing goddess out there.’ He looked at her. ‘I’m not sure what Gul offers is death. The information is ambiguous but …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s only a theory, but I think Gul subjugates, for his own ends. He’s not really the God of Death. I think it is a masquerade. Gul is … something else. And I don’t know what.’

‘But the gods are real!’ she insisted. ‘They have real powers!’

Timut-Imri was manipulating the aethereal, the highest level of the Aura, at a colossal level, outside his body, but in his head, it was as comfortable as a palace drawing room. ‘Yes, well … They do, but there are various theories among the adept. My suspicion is …’ He wrote a glyph on the air, and turned back to her. ‘My suspicion is that the Dendrownans have it right with their K’tun.’

Maritaten had never received so much magical erudition in a single meeting, and she had a thousand questions to ask. K’tun? She’d never heard of it. The Dendrownans had adepts? But she stayed on her topic.

‘But Hell is real? The thousand hells under the earth?’ She was watching his hands as he teased a living flame from nothing. It was the bright yellow of the living sun; he wasn’t even looking at it.

There was a wave, a pulse; as a child, she had seen the first flood of the new inundation flowing down the mighty Iteru river, and it was like that, except it was sunlight, redoubled.

Timut-Imri adjusted something after a look of surprise. ‘If you were looking to build a secret fortress, where better than under the earth?’ he muttered.

Maritaten had never known the old sorcerer to be in such a talkative mood. ‘And can the gates of Hell only be opened from inside?’ she asked. ‘That’s what the priests say.’

‘Ask them if any of them have ever been there.’ Timut-Imri had control of the swelling golden light now. In a different voice, he said, ‘This should not be happening.’

It was as if there was a shield raised around the scarab. It glowed, first sun-yellow, then a blue tinge crept in. Maritaten could see the effort written on Timut-Imri’s face; indeed, being inside his memory palace, she could feel him exerting himself. The light migrated to blue, then red, then white, as if it was metal being smelted at a forge.

There was a ringing sound, and a wave of blue light pulsed out from the amulet.

Timut-Imri frowned, but he didn’t hesitate. His voice rang as he spoke the words of power from his sigils, and one by one they flared up and then died. He sang a new invocation and realigned his crystal.

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Thing’s hot.’ He looked at Maritaten. ‘More smoke.’ He waved. ‘Something very odd just happened, but …’ He shrugged, his hands making warding signs. ‘But it only seems to have enhanced the working.’

She put a spoonful of the resin crystals on the charcoal and swung the censer hard, and smoke billowed out.

‘Think about him,’ Timut-Imri said. ‘Imagine him here with us.’

Maritaten smiled. She knew where Zos was, even then: out in the delta with his ‘diversion’, finishing off what was left of the Jeker fleet. In fact, the Jekers had rushed to defend their remaining ships, and she’d led her army and her bureaucrats into the city without so much as a hostile glance from the much-vaunted cannibals. The Jekers didn’t seem to care that they’d been outwitted; they’d pressed the siege, clearly hoping to provoke a battle they could win. So far, they’d done most of the