I walked up a long causeway, bounded on either side by broken human-sized statues. The further I went, the more I could see how the place must once have been magnificent, an octagonal city-temple of extraordinary size and complexity. We had larger cathedrals on Colchis, but nothing, perhaps, made with such a raw understanding of the relationships between the real and the unreal. I could see immediately that these long-dead architects had known what they were doing. They had known the sacred ratios and proportions. They had known where to site their watchtowers and campaniles so as to catch the red passage of Davin's ancient sun, casting shadows that looked, out of the corner of an eye, like teeth, or horns, or curved talons.
By then it was late in the day, and the air was seamy with tired heat. My surroundings were almost completely quiet only my breaths and my footfalls broke the stillness.
I found the priest squatting in the centre of a tumbledown courtyard. A fountain lay choked and gasping amid a heap of rubble, its water long gone. Gargoyles and stone dragons looked down on us from crumbling terraces, their gnarled expressions grotesque against the reddening sky.
The priest was as ugly as every Davinite was - a snaggle-toothed, greasy-haired wretch with dirty robes. He blinked as I approached him, then smiled broadly and obsequiously.
'You came,' he said, as if I were some delivery boy on an errand. I was comfortably twice his size, and could have broken his neck with a flick of my finger. He was clearly a fool, near the end of his strength and wits.
'I saw this place in my dreams,' I said. 'But not like this.'
'It's not what it used to be,' he agreed. He got up and limped across the courtyard. I followed him, having to check my stride to match his pace. We passed under the shade of the gargoyles and into chambers within, all adorned with cracked plaster and gap-tiled mosaics. As we went, I saw faded frescoes on the walls - angels fighting daemons, monsters writhing in combat with knights. I saw depictions of high walls crumbling, and flames leaping over falling towers. Repeated images of a gold-armoured warrior had been scratched out, his face replaced with crude images of a single eye.
Eventually we reached a larger chamber, one buried down in the heart of the city-temple. Its high domed roof was cracked like an eggshell, allowing red light to lance down on to the floor around us. A low stone altar stood in the centre of the space, surrounded by four ritual pillars. The surviving stonework was etched with lines of fine carving - tight-curled glyphs, repeated over and over, just like the screeds on my own flesh.
My skin tingled. I could feel the charge running through these foundations, apt to snap, like static charge, with my every movement. I was breathing faster, my primary heart pumping a little too hard.
'So this is where it will happen,' I breathed.
'It might,' said the priest. 'If you are indeed a true messenger.'
I was feeling heady at that point, intoxicated. It is one thing to witness visions, it is another to see the actual site, the actual stone, the actual bricks. I turned on him, catching him by his throat. He gagged, and I almost laughed out loud.
'Does this feel true, priest?' I asked, squeezing just a fraction harder.
He couldn't answer. It would take only the slightest movement to crush his windpipe. I very nearly did it. The nexus of death and power in this place was so complete and all-consuming.
But I halted, suddenly aware of someone watching me. I turned to see a little girl, barely more than a babe in arms, staring at me with dark, wide eyes. I couldn't interpret her expression. It wasn't fear. It might have been a kind of exhilaration, just like mine.
I let the priest go. 'Who is that?' I asked.
'Only Akshub,' he gasped, rubbing the weals on his neck ruefully. 'Do not hurt her, I beg you.'
I studied her, vaguely amused, and she stared back at me fearlessly. 'Why would I do that?' I asked. 'Is she dangerous?'
Then my gaze wandered off, roving across the faded frescoes. They were badly eroded, hard to make out even with my enhanced eyesight. In all of them, though, I saw the same image, over and over again, picked out in the desert colours of terracotta, ochre and sallow.
A knife. A blade. A flint shard, crudely fashioned, the length of a mortal man's spine. I knew without needing to ask that no such weapon had ever been fashioned on this world. These ancient artisans had been working from visions, casting their minds out on the ether's tides, knowing what had to come here to fulfil their lives' purpose.
'Where will I find it?' I asked.
The priest looked up at me, fear and resentment marring his old face. 'I think that is your task to discover, messenger,' he said.
I smiled dryly under my helm, feeling my new tattoos flex across my skin. It was a good irony, to leave this dried-out old husk to meet me here, the desperate last cough of a half-dead people. If I had waited another decade, there might have been no one left at all, just the stones and the dust and the serpents in the sand.
'Rebuild it,' I said coldly, looking up at the state of the walls and the roof. 'A governor will be appointed when the fight is over - he'll ensure you have what you need. Rebuild it all, just as it was.'
The priest grinned pathetically. 'There are so few of us left. Can you not send us... help?'
I knew what he wanted. Slaves culled from our many conquests, the kind he had dreamed of owning ever since he had learned the words of the old curses.
I didn't bother giving him an answer. He glanced back over at the girl, who hadn't
