LITMIR.BIZ

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Brigid’s experience of attempted mind control in Tenth City, she theorized that there was something in the architectural design itself that focused a person’s thoughts in specific ways, perhaps making them more susceptible to instruction. As such, it is a way of controlling people, a sigil that traverses time. This is the same design of the cities that you and I inhabited in the twentieth century. We may presume that the subtle control of humanity by the Annunaki is long-lived, Mr. Philboyd.”

      While it seemed fanciful, the use of sigils—or magical symbols—that Lakesh referred to was prevalent throughout human history. Most infamous among these was the Nazi swastika, a reversed symbol for peace that, in its mirrored form, was believed to have wrought conflict.

      Lakesh and Brewster stared at the image on the latter’s terminal screen in silence while, across the room, Donald Bry became more animated in his conversation with Grant about the mysteriously appearing parallax point. At the same time, one of the Tigers of Heaven, the modern-day samurai warriors whose property the Cerberus base had temporarily commandeered, took two paces into the room before subtly attracting Lakesh’s attention.

      “Dr. Singh,” the squat, broad-shouldered warrior urged, “your presence is required outside by Mistress Shizuka.”

      Lakesh nodded. “Keep an eye on the situation here,” he told Brewster Philboyd, glancing across to Donald Bry as he did so. “If anything changes, I want to know.”

      “Sir,” Brewster acknowledged with a curt nod.

      * * *

      THOUGH FULL OF OMINOUS shadows, the fortress of Ullikummis appeared to be empty, and after a while Kane stated that conclusion out loud. “If we haven’t bumped into anyone by now, my guess is we ain’t gonna.”

      The fortress had several levels, connected by rough, uneven staircases or spiraling ramps. While its passageways were wide, the rooms felt haphazard and cramped, like things that had budded from the main walkways rather than been intentionally connected. That was disquieting to Kane, who felt there was something almost living about the structure itself despite its lack of movement. It felt grown, formed organically. In some way, walking through the fortress felt a little like walking through a body.

      They found rooms that contained possessions, obviously human. One room had a bunch of letters on the hard stone cot that stretched against one wall, tied with a ribbon and inexpertly hidden in the folds of a fur blanket. Another room, this one featuring two stone bunks, had a simple game board carved of wood, a jointed hinge along its center so that the pieces could be cleverly stored within. None of the rooms had doors, and Kane recalled how the cells had worked in Life Camp Zero, the prison that Ullikummis had used to hold the Cerberus exiles. Those cells had seemed to be hollows in the rock like honeycombs, and their doors only appeared when necessary, a shifting of a rock wall that seemed almost to have the properties of a liquid and a solid in one item.

      Balam stopped as they walked past another open doorway, turning and walking to the room as if in a trance. Kane continued on, peering in each open doorway in turn, glancing across the shadow-dappled interiors before moving to the next. Three rooms along, he saw something odd resting on the floor. Clearly broken, it looked like a bucket seat or a gigantic vase, the top torn free to leave a jagged line. As Kane stepped closer, something fluttered across his vision and he found his sight turning dark. Kane looked around, realizing for the first time that Balam was no longer with him. He hadn’t noticed his silent companion had stopped some doors away from him, and it only dawned on him now when his vision started to fade, the colors ebbing away to be replaced by grayness, the subtle edges of the stone walls and the shattered bowllike object diminished to a blur.

      “Balam?” Kane called, turning.

      The two were linked, and it was in this way that Kane could see, using their telepathic tie to overcome his own blindness. Proximity affected the bond, lessening its effectiveness as Kane well knew from a similar event while they had been searching the old Cerberus redoubt. So many new limitations to remember and to juggle, Kane cursed as he stepped out of the room. So many hazards to navigate at each turn.

      “Balam? Where did you go?”

      The weight of the Sin Eater still in his hand, Kane marched back down the corridor where he had just been. One advantage of their link was that he couldn’t lose Balam for long, he thought cheerlessly; he just had to walk around until his vision became clear again.

      When Kane found Balam, the smaller humanoid was standing in the middle of a small room. The room contained a simple bed, a stone base with a little padding from several furs, a blanket made of the same. There was a narrow window on one wall that was little bigger than a letter slot, but the room was otherwise unremarkable. Balam was poised silently in the center of the room, his hands clasped together before him, his eyes closed.

      “Balam? Everything okay?” Kane urged.

      “She was here,” the gray-skinned creature said. He spoke quietly, and his eyes remained closed in meditation.

      “Who?” Kane asked and stopped himself, realizing that the question was redundant. Balam meant Little Quav, of course.

      “She’s not afraid,” Balam continued. “Merely...curious. She was told things here, taught things.”

      “Some learning curve,” Kane muttered. “Imprisoning a three-year-old girl in a big stone fortress.”

      Balam’s eyes flickered open, their dark orbs peering wistfully into Kane’s. “I do not believe she was imprisoned, Kane. This was a family reunion, mother and son.”

      “Well, she ain’t here now,” Kane said, indicating the empty room.

      “No,” Balam agreed. “So where is she? Where is Ullikummis?”

      Kane racked his brain for a moment, trying to think in the manner of the Annunaki. They were multidimensional beings whose malice was just one aspect of their eternal boredom with their lives. So where would Ullikummis go next?

      “Enlil,” Kane said slowly. “That’s the piece that’s missing from this family reunion.”

      Balam’s bulbous head rocked back and forth on his spindly neck as he nodded his agreement. “The child is not ready,” he said after some consideration. “Her Ninlil aspect has yet to be teased out of her. She remains the little girl that you and I know as Quav. It will be years before that changes.”

      “There’s something you should see,” Kane said, gesturing to the corridor. “Maybe you can make sense of it.” He was talking about the bowllike thing he had found, but he chose not to add that he had been unable to analyze it because his vision had failed. It wouldn’t help to remind Balam of this; the First Folk diplomat was jumpy enough as it was.

      Thus, Kane led the way from the room with Balam at his side. There were no doors in the gloomy palace, so everything here was open to view now.

      Three doorways along, Kane stepped into the room, encouraging Balam to follow. There, in the center of the room, lay the broken bowllike structure. Kane could see it better now with his eyes recovered, and he studied it properly for the first time. Bigger than an armchair, the bowl seemed to be made of some kind of stone and rested on a very low plinth that raised it a quarter inch above the stone floor. The top edge was jagged as if the rest of it had been snapped away and, looking at it now, Kane was reminded of an egg. There were shards of the broken remains all around, quartz within it like plates of stained glass twinkling in the light from the arrow-slit windows that lined the room on three sides.

      “Any ideas?” Kane prompted.

      “A chrysalis,” Balam said. There was no hint of doubt in his voice.

      “You seen this before?” Kane challenged.

      Balam inclined his head in a nod. “They are one of the ways that the Annunaki employed to stave off their immense boredom,” he explained as he leaned down to pick through the wreckage strewed about the cuplike object. “You will have heard of how the gods of the Annunaki wore different faces and thus appeared to different cultures in different ways. Overlord Enlil

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