Khanaphes has welcomed me, and yet excluded me. Petri does not feel it, but she was always a dull tool. There is a darkness at the heart of this city, and it calls for me.
Last night's entry. He should have left this journal with Petri, just in case.
The heart of Khanaphes yawned for him, here overlooking this grand plaza. They liked their space, here. After they had won a victory against the Many of Nem, they had paraded their chariots all around this square, their soldiers and their banners, before immortalizing their own triumph on further expanses of stone. But who had they been parading for? Not for the ministers, who had stood with heads bowed throughout; not for the common people of the city, who had been away at their daily tasks. It had been for the others.
There were others. Kadro was convinced of that now. They were spoken of so often that their name became meaningless, and therefore they were never truly spoken of at all, as if held so close to the face that they could not be focused on. Here was the heart, though. If Khanaphes was holding a secret, then it was here in the tombs.
In the centre of the plaza stood the pyramid. It was a squat thing, rising just thirty feet in giant steps, and was sliced off broadly at the top, to provide a summit ringed with huge statues. From his high vantage, a vantage that the structure's earth-bound builders could never have enjoyed, Kadro could see that within the ring of statues' silent vigil there was a pit, descending into a darkness that his eyes had yet to pierce. It was the great unspoken what at the centre of Khanaphes, and tonight he intended to plumb it.