Ow. I fell down the stairs.

  Stairs are unexpected. With the ruins nearly swallowed by the desert, I'd figured only the upper parts had a chance of being free of sand. But here's a whole lower level, pitch-black and smelling like a freshly opened tomb. I'm not happy about this. It seems like the beginning of the kind of story that ends "and then he was never seen again." I seriously consider turning around to take my chances with the giant bug. But I guess as long as I don't get lost I can always save that option for a last resort. I stumble down the hallway very, very slowly.

  It reminds me a little of trying to sneak out of Serana's darkened house after her father had unexpectedly come home early. At least I'm not naked this time.

  When I do catch some light, at first I think my eyes are playing tricks on me. It's a very faint gray-blue, outlining a doorway in the utter blackness. I pass my hand in front of my face and convince myself that can see the shapes of my fingers against it. I keep my steps cautious, determined not to fall into any more pit traps/stairs.

  The doorway reveals a large, bare room. There are a few scraps that might once have been clothes or furniture or Twelve know what, but time and sand have left nothing but rust stains and loose threads. The same goes for the human inhabitants, whose bones have decayed into a few loose splinters. Half a jawbone, black with age, sports a few yellowed teeth.

  The only thing left intact is the skull. It sits on a stone block like a holy relic on its dais, obviously not a part of the once-living detritus on the floor. It lacks a lower jaw but is otherwise in perfect shape, its eye sockets aimed my way as though inspecting me with an empty gaze. And it is glowing with that gray-blue light, so faint that a torch would wash it out but blazing like a star to my radiance-starved retinas.

  Odd.

  I watch for a while, waiting for something to happen. When nothing does, I step over the threshold and make my way to the skull, trying to avoid disturbing the remains. Even so, a few fragments of bone collapse into ashen dust from the tremors of my footsteps.

  I'm thinking about that glow.

  Lamps glow. Engines glow. But they need fuel, and this place has been left alone for a time. Centuries.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  glows a deep, cerulean blue. As far as I know it lasts forever.

  The glow of the skull doesn't like water-of-life. But I'm not a scholar. All I know is, after so long in the dark, what else could still be alight?

  Maybe if you drink enough water-of-life, your bones start to glow? If I cut open First-in-the-City, would his skull look like this?

  (Not an experiment you want to try, unless you fancy being slowly dissected over the next thousand years in the dungeons of the ruler of the world.)

  Supposedly power flowed more freely in ancient times. So maybe this is some king of ages past, buried here in this forgotten desert tomb, still faintly alight with the radiance of his years of conquest. When you put it like that, it sounds almost plausible, right?

  And if that the case -- I can't help my automatic first reaction -- the skull would be worth a back in the City. Igz'auf Rakan and his bespectacled nerds would give anything to get their hands on it, and when you stand as high in the favor of Earth-as-in-Heaven as Rakan does, is quite a lot.

  If I bring this back and get it into the right hands, everything I've done and everything I -- up to and including quite a lot of murder -- will be washed away. I won't have to bluff my way into the Palace of Eyes, I'll be invited. I can have Ba'alabeth strung up and dissected slowly, or (even worse) force her to apologize.

  All these fantasies spin through my mind before I have the chance to take a breath. Hooray, all my problems are solved! Except for crossing a thousand miles of waste and somehow getting back into the City (where I'm an outlaw) with an ancient artifact, then presenting said artifact to the one person at court who might still be willing to talk to me. No problem.

  Still, better off than I'd been an hour ago, right?

  Step one: pick up the skull.

  Any minute now.

  No magical field is holding me in place. It just feels like a precipice. Touching this thing is going to send my life down a different path, and while you might think that was all upside given where I've ended up, the liminality still makes me hesitate. But in the end I figure: even if I give up on that idea, even if I never even try to get back to the City, at the very least a glowing skull will help me find my way out of this place without falling down any more stairs.

  So I grab it, trying for nonchalance. I'm not struck down by sacred fire for my insolence, and no hidden mechanism in the dais unleashes a storm of traps. (Thought of that one a too late, oops.) The skull, glow aside, just feels like a skull.

  Except that there's a … feeling, inside my head. A twisting sensation, as though someone were rummaging around in my mind like an overcrowded trunk. Then there's a voice, which I'm certain is audible only within the confines of my own skull. It's dull and sepulchral, , like the slamming shut of metal doors on the tomb of time itself.

  What it says is, wonderful. somebody finally turns up, and he's a bloody con-man.