‘What?’
‘I reached inside him and there I found a strange and marvellous power. It was familiar and I had a dream.’ Nakor smiled. ‘More of a vision, maybe. Anyway, time stopped then, or I had hours of thoughts in seconds, but suddenly I knew… everything. Bek came to me because it was preordained that he should. The thing that moved him was the same as what moved me, when I was young. Both of us were tools of the gods, but with a different purpose. I was to be his guide, and he was to be the vessel to bring something back to Omadrabar that had been lost. So, I made him a vessel.’
‘A vessel?’ asked Magnus. ‘For what?’
‘For what was inside one of the Talnoy in the cave.’
Pug was speechless. What the Dasati with Macros’s memory had told him was that each of the Talnoy housed the soul of a lost Dasati god. ‘You put a god inside him?’
‘Only a tiny little bit, but enough.’
‘Enough for what?’ asked Magnus.
‘Enough to make sure the TeKarana died, even if Valko didn’t kill him, and that something of critical importance would come back here.’
‘What?’ asked Pug, now totally confused by the little man’s convolutions.
‘The gods, Pug. Remember, all the gods on all the realms are just aspects of the same fundamental powers, and all the gods of our realm and those above and below are locked in a struggle with the creatures of the Void. When the Dark One rose to power, a mad plot was put in place, one that caused the ten thousand gods of the Dasati to hide in plain sight.’
‘The Talnoy.’
‘Yes. The Dark One is powerful, but there is nothing intelligent about the Dreadlords. I don’t even know if they can be said to think the way we do. They exist, they act, they have purpose, but… they are beyond our understanding. So, the Dreadlord first subverted the worshippers of the God of Death, Bakal, and began the Dark Temple. When the Chaos War raged here, the Dasati gods were given haven.’
‘On Midkemia,’ said Magnus.
‘Yes, in that cave, where they have stayed for… more years than I can count.’
‘What of the one Kaspar found?’
‘That was put there by Macros, at the bidding of… well, the one who is really behind all of what we’ve been struggling with. Macros was only another agent of the gods. So, Bek is the first of the ancient Dasati gods to return home. To these people, he is Kantas-Barat. On our world he would be Onan-ka.’
‘The God of Battle,’ said Pug.
‘It seemed right for these people. The Happy Warrior has come home. Bek will remain for a while, but his mortal days are over. He has been consumed by the god that is within him. Bek as we knew him when he first appeared is no more. He has been dead since before we came to this realm, really.’
‘How did you put… a tiny bit of a god into Bek, Nakor?’ asked Magnus.
‘That’s the hard part to explain,’ said Nakor. He pointed to his own chest. ‘I have something here, and sometimes it… takes over. Sometimes I remember it doing things, tricks I don’t know, and other times… it’s just blanks. I go to sleep one place, wake up another, and sometimes people are very angry with me, or sometimes I have things I didn’t have before in my sack.’
‘Do you know who’s doing this?’ asked Pug.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Nakor with a grin. ‘And you need to know, because you need to take him back.’
‘Take who back?’ asked Magnus.
‘Ban-ath.’
Pug sat down next to Nakor. ‘The God of Thieves?’
‘The Midkemian god of thieves,’ confirmed Nakor. ‘He cannot stay without a protective vessel,’ —Nakor pointed to his own chest— ‘or he will perish – well, he won’t perish, but the tiny part of him I carry within will – and what he has learned here must go back. You must be his vessel for a little while, until you get home.’
‘But why don’t you take him back?’ asked Magnus.
Nakor grinned. ‘Because I’m not going back. This is my time.’ He looked around at the vast cavern and said, ‘It’s an odd place to die, don’t you think? At least I’ll have a lot of company, human as well as Dasati.’
‘Why do you need to stay, Nakor?’
‘Because something very big, and very important, needs to happen, and I need to be here to see that it does. I will have just enough tricks left to ensure that this thing goes as it should, and then I will… end.’ He stood up slowly. Pug also stood up. Nakor touched his own chest with his hand and said, ‘He may answer some questions; perhaps he will think he owes you that much. Perhaps not.’ He moved his hand from his chest suddenly and put it against Pug’s, and instantly Pug could feel something flow from Nakor’s hand into Pug’s body.
‘What—?’
‘I’m going to rest now,’ said Nakor. ‘You have something you must do, and soon.’
‘What?’ asked Pug.