The Blood of Egypt
By Christian Klaver
Back to Part Two: Chapters 6-10
Chapter Eleven: Nightmares for the Dead
The lion-headed goddess Sekhmet was said to be the wife of Ptah and called the “Mistress of Dread, Who gives life eternally”. One of many feline-headed divinities (along with Nefertem and Bast), she was considered one of the fiercest. Associated with war and retribution, she was said to use arrows to pierce her enemies with fire, her breath being the hot desert wind as her body took on the glare of the midday sun. She represented the destructive force of the sun.
According to the legends, she came into being when Ra sent Hathor to earth to take vengeance on man. She was the one who slaughtered mankind, causing a deluge of blood similar to the great flood. She drank their blood in massive quantities, only being stopped by trickery when Ra caused beer to be stained red and left in her path. She was, thus, the destructive side of the sun and Hathor, and given the title Eye of Ra.
Rerira’s Story
I am dreaming, and it disturbs me as nothing before it. I am the nightmare which feeds, and so am unused to the dreams that haunt children. Disturbing images come to me, visions that plague me in my daytime slumber, but the dreams remain mere wisps during the active night, elusive, yet lingering in the hidden parts of myself.
Then they grow stronger, and begin to intrude into the waking hours. At first, I expect the face of Khumenakt’s minion, for I have no living memory of defeat, except at his hands. A gloating vision of him still dwells in the mind’s eye. But these dreams are not of him.
The dream starts so…
I am being beaten, struck repeatedly, viciously. I can just barely make out the faces of my attackers through my shielding hands and the glare of the sun. The most aggressive of them blocks my way and peers down upon me with piercing hawk eyes and a menacing hawk’s beak. Horus The Avenger. To my left the frightening dog aspect of Anubis grins wickedly next to the lion-headed Sekhmet as they strike gleefully, using the rear end of a military spear. Sekhmet likes to jab the butt of her weapon into the soft parts of my back, eschewing the threshing blows used by the men.
The early morning rays crawl over everything, illuminating all. I can hear the burning sands as if my flesh were searing to the bone. And the ominous swish whack of the poles twitches my body like a spasming puppeteer. And there is a long, thin wailing over all, like a infant’s cry. The ground is rocky, and my hands bleed. Huge monoliths loom around me.
Up the slope of a nearby hill, Osiris and Isis are dragging something away. Something of mine, very important. I can see the stitching across the god of the underworld’s body even from here. It is from this direction that the infant’s cry comes. I call out in answer, but it changes nothing. Osiris and Isis continue their work uncaring.
Thoth directs them from a perch on one of the monoliths, and like the Avenger, he is bird headed, but his beak is not the wide cutting blade. More like the curved assassin’s knife, the hooked beak of the river ibis. They all move like athletes. Their healthy naked limbs are bronzed from the sun. Even the stitched body of Osiris looks as if it could wrestle Hippopotami. The gods are gathered, but I see nothing of Set, my own patron.
I am screaming, trying to crawl around the Avenger, calling out to the infant’s cry. Horus has reversed his weapon, and I can feel the blade slash across my back…
And then I wake.
There is little left of the dream but an abstract memory devoid of the feelings that plague me in the day. But the notion of being bothered by such things irks me. Dreams are human concerns. And it is laughable, this vision, for the gods do not strike directly and would not need to flail with such childish weapons. Shadows cast by them sweep aside cities. Their full attention is not meant for Egypt. I feel this to be some feeble attack from the Guardian’s temple priest. I sneer at such, but it leaves my mood foul.
But it is time to protect myself. For there are things that move in the day that need attention. The storm crows would prove useful in this regard. I shall have to discover what has happened to them.
I fragment. Pieces of me I leave with the nursery. It is too precious to leave alone, even for a moment. And even the lesser aware fragments can feel the pleasure that wells around the place. Here I nurse each newborn with a spark of stolen Khu, and carefully fan the resulting flames.
Even as the other pieces of my self wing to Pharaoh’s city in search of the storm crows, or taste the currents of divine footsteps in Gethos, the few that remain in the nursery preen among the seedlings. After the initial seeding, they are growing strong.
The long storage cellar of Yuk-Chek’s house is narrow, with low ceilings and supports of stone throughout so that the entire area is much like a warren, cool, soft and protective. My fragments flutter through the cramped darkness easily. I’ve spent enough time here to learn every crevice, and the darkness enfolds us gently. I am truly a creature of darkness, unconcerned with sight. I can feel the dirty walls, soft dirt floor and still feeble movements of my children. Light is unnecessary.
The married soldier is almost ready, no longer content for me to bring him ragged pieces of food. He is strong enough now that he has already made two kills among his siblings to feed his growing hunger. The weak fall so that the rest will grow strong, as is proper. More than before, my attending fragments merely watch with pleasure, dropping only the occasional tidbit of meat from the latest sacrifice. The continuous chore of feeding and strengthening fills all of us with a sensuous splendor.
Even when the failures do not come to term, there is happiness as they are beset upon by the others and the entire nursery is filled with feeding sounds. The fragments move among the slippery carnage as family. They are almost ready.
In Gethos, there are things brewing. The city’s Guardian is louder now. A confrontation between the priests and myself is inevitable, but still we circle, sniffing the air in mutual hostility. It is not yet time, but it will be soon. The sowing is the first step. If Pharaoh and his Aten have not finished their murder yet, than it shall fall on us. Ever does the day need the night.
And there are other presences in Gethos, and I can smell them all. The blood magic leaves its iron taste wherever the hag’s footsteps have been. The taste of blood magic tells me that this is Isis’ tool, though what she might want is unknown. The family went into their sleep willingly, for isn’t the Aten just one face of the sun, and is not Ra the king of the gods? While Ra sleeps for Pharaoh, all the family sleeps with him. This leaves only crafty rebellious Set, and Ra’s sleeping face, the Aten.
The entire family can do much, but Horus, Thoth, and Osiris sleep, following Ra’s example, as the sun-disk is but a sleeper, a non-personified version. Pharaoh’s little walking dream. Most of the other gods follow this example, making Ra’s slumber the now fragile cover that holds the rest contained. Only Isis, the royal witch, is active, and her blooded hag is paltry fare. And, of course, Set. But we are content to rule the shadow places outside of cities, no challenge to Pharaoh’s machinations.
There are other things besides Set that roam the desert, things less connected to cities and the people in them. The beasts that fill the spaces left empty by men. There are wild beasts in the desert, and creatures in the rivers. They are creatures of Set, but Set does not expect their homage any more than he expects presents from the Western wind. If they fall upon the human priests I seek, so much the better. Should they get in my way, they will perish. Just as only the strongest of my pets underneath survive, so too does Set watch the pack and I play cat and mouse. It only remains to see which is which. It seems that they hunt the sun-worshippers as well. Let us see if Pharaoh’s minions are strong enough to survive the test.
Perhaps if I am removed from their path the desert beasts will track down the blooded hag. Familial love is not lost between our patrons, and I would relish such a thing. I believe the blood stink of Isis’ hag stings deeper into their senses than mine. So much the better.
Even further from the nursery, three fragments are winging to Pharaoh’s city. I am moving in groups now. Twice the Guardian’s apprentice has driven me. I’ve felt no such thing from his master, and it befuddles me. Why should the that particular man have power over me? The aged priest did not affect me so. I have a need for answers, and I know who can ferret them out.
I find them easily enough in Pharaoh’s city. Despite the difference in rank, like attracts like, and I can smell their trail like fallen blood. They will be my tool against the desert priest.
They hunch in the granary like beaten animals. Their leader remains, the Syrian. He retains enough dignity to rise up and greet me as befits an aspect of the mighty, flinging open his arms.
“We have done all that was asked of us,” he shouts to me and to the night time sky. “We wakened and delivered you to Gethos at the proper time. If our next task is death, then so be it!”
His rapturous expression makes it clear that he truly did welcome death, should Set wish to bestow it, as was proper. Perhaps, soon, fellow disciple, but not yet. Not here.
The Nubian cowers, nursing his wounds and sheltering a small rodent that squeals upon sighting me.
I land on the Syrian’s shoulder, a benediction to reward his fervor. The Nubian calms slightly, when no harm comes to him.
My second and third fragments circle the pitiful group lazily. I would need more than this to achieve what I needed. If only my power did not wane with the sun.
I have to supplement their strength. Perhaps a pair of seeds from the nursery, if they are ready. But first, I have to bring the storm crows closer.
The survivors of my unwilling attack still fear another. And I offer no comfort. The boys and young girl are absent, presumably dead. But the Syrian and Nubian are enough. The bird on the Syrian’s shoulder takes flight.
The other two fragments I use to scream, startling both of them into stumbling in the other direction. I advance, taking flight, and allowing one of my talons to graze the Syrian’s back. They realize my intentions quickly, until only slight movements are needed to drive them towards Gethos. It will be a difficult trip for them, but Set does not cater to the weak. And their destiny will be glorious.
Two fragments suffice for this, the third veers away. There is another thing to be done in Pharaoh’s city.
I must visit the Living god.
My attention leaves the storm crows, and I approach the Pharaoh’s place, the Great Temple. It dwarfs all other buildings. Almost half the city is the temple itself.
Even I can not ignore the splendor of this place. Gold bedecks everything, clings to the walls and pillars in sheets like a splendid metallic ivy that only needs the Sun-Disk’s blessing to grow. There is no surface in the huge austere building that is not carved, painted or covered in gold.
He waits for me on one of the many terraces, and he shines like the sun, and like the sun he is alone. The apex of the horizon. The Son of the Sun.
He burns worse even than the desert. I can not bear to be in the same room, to look at him. I twist first one eye, then the other away in an attempt to avoid the blindness that assails me until I am forced to bury my head in my wings. The stench of him fills everything.
My brief glimpse shows me a sleek man, hardly iron-thewed like the Pharaohs of the past. His walk is unprepossessing. His body soft and supple, almost womanly with a long unhandsome jaw and soft hands. But there is no mistaking his power. The badges of office that he toys with would be a death sentence to any other. And the Sun dances in his eyes, like thunder in the near distance.
“Ah…” he says softly. “You did come. I was beginning to wonder if you would.” His voice is soft, almost feminine, but power rolls in every word.
“It…,” he pauses and sips something blood colored from an glittering goblet. “Amuses me to give you free hand in Gethos. It serves both of our purposes. And I forgive you your transgression in the desert. I had given them to you, as I said. Prince and priest both had outlived their usefulness. But the priest has changed these last few days, and interests me. Be that as it may, you may have him, if the small gifts I gave do not protect him. He is less important than what happens in Gethos, and I expect your actions to shape that quickly, before the rest of my family awakens.”
He turns and strolls slightly closer. It burns like a molten bath. Closer yet, and his presence may be my undoing, and he knows this well. “My father is a glorious idea, and will remain so, impersonal. And you and your master will keep to the shadows, cloaked as is your nature. I am the only living god the people of Egypt need. I will not have the festival of the dead wake the Aten, to make him Ra again. Do you understand? The old ways are chaos. Only I understand the importance of purity, and clarity of action. The family is filled with bickering and petty concerns, as all families are. Only the Aten is pure. It is the lion guardian of Gethos that struggles in its quicksand, and through the noise of its struggle attempts to wake the rest of the family. Such a thing would be disastrous.”
“Kill the worshippers of Khumenakt,” the Son of the Sun continues. “And the Lion itself will wither. And then there will be no awakening for the Lion, and no awakening for Isis, Thoth or Horus or any of the rest. My family must remain sleeping. Only the Sun-Disk will shine.”
I can do nothing, only cower in his possible displeasure. Even I am not so much a divine thing as he.
“You have done well, so far,” he continues. “But, I was starting to wonder if you were coming here. Entering my city without coming to pay your homage directly, why that would be offensive. I might have thought that you might be hiding something from me.”
“Your grace…” I stammer through the fragment’s beak. It was difficult to use a beast’s shape, and the words of man. Especially difficult so close to the living god. His light burns me, and I twist in the rays the shine off his ka like a man on a spear.
“Your grace…there is a problem. A man…" I struggle for the words while he watches, waiting for me to compose myself better. "It is one of the Lion’s new priests. He has been able to control me, send one of my fragments against my allies.”
“I know nothing of this,” he snaps irritated. “The Lion is not yet that strong. Kill him in force if you must, but deal with it. Kill him. Kill all of them, and sink Gethos in the foul darkness that is your birthright. This is the reason that I suffer your existence.”
I remain transfixed until he dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “You may go.”
And I sweep back into the soothing night sky as the fish takes back to the welcome sea.
Chapter Twelve: Little Deaths
The ancient Egyptians had a reverent attitude toward animals and were inclined to consider almost every animal as a symbol of the divine power. Like cats, dogs were appreciated greatly, respected members of the Egyptian family. The birth of a hound was considered second in importance only to the birth of a son. The favorite hounds of the upper class were mummified and buried with their owners.
When the pet hound died, the entire family would go into mourning and honor the buried pet. The walls of Egyptian tombs often were decorated with images of their hounds.
Druset’s Story
Djorkekt…lost and forgotten, but returning…
Or is it Druset that is lost? More and more, I am Djorkekt, the banished priest, and the kindly scribe is less and less in me. The dust of ancient cities swirls in my dreams and Druset is swept further into their depths.
Each time I closed my eyes for nightly prayer, it took me longer to remember when I opened them. When I emerged from my private meditation chambers, the two strangers waited for me in the small antechamber. Man and girl-child, fat and waifish, respectively. I stared blankly at the curtain of dangling beads, my arms lifted slightly from my sides, listening to the faint stirring that came from beyond the curtain.
The strangers smoothed my body with purifying oils and girded me with the purist of white kilts. And the fat man’s constant murmuring prayers, like a reverse lullaby that gently easing me back into the world of the living. Only when I thought of them as something other than the fat man and little girl, did the memories come slowly trickling back. Things came to me, their names, Menna’s refusal to speak, Ay’s murdered wife. The boys.
Menna handed me the carved stone rod with the Great Lion’s head cast in gold: my badge of office. When I stepped from my chambers into the common area, my flock waited for me. This was the largest room in the temple, huge stone pillars holding aloft an enormous vaulted ceiling. The pillars were bare, stripped of their latest sheathings of gold. Now the first beginnings of stone carving emerged. Only the strangely aware eyes of the Lion-headed Khumenakt graced the stone, giving the appearance of a deific birth taking place.
As the High priest of Khumenakt, reawakened Guardian of Gethos, I smiled blankly at the people milling around and tried to remember any of their names. None came to me, though I felt sure that many of them had been here for weeks.
I walked sedately through the flock, who had picked up Ay’s chant. Their low singing gained magnitude as it reflected off the stone walls, cascades of sound running through the otherwise silent halls. I fought an urge to run, to awaken. The stone was colder here on my bare feet.
Some of it began to come back.
It had only been a few days, but already we developed a routine. Ay recovered quickly and immediately made himself useful around the Temple. Not counting Menhu, he was the first of my new disciples. They always came in the morning, like dew. And each morning Ay would help me gather the terrible night’s refugees and get them working on fixing the mortar in the eastern wall, or purifying the lines, or some other healing ritual. Once immersed in the honest and simple tasks he set them, they always thanked him. I knew they could see him as kindred.
Unlike myself, as testified by the hurried bowing, sidelong looks and soft whispers that surrounded me. If Ay was the patriarch of our new order, I was the frightening guardian. A true priest of Khumenakt. Welcome and loved, as people can only love great and terrible things, but always from a distance.
Menna followed him around, his secretary and ward. She did not speak, but she dwelled in Ay’s shadow and lay at his feet when we played our nightly game of Senet. The games lacked something in fire, for Ay was only a beginner, but it was the only human contact I had these days, and it was comforting.
During the games, Ay would inform me of who had joined us that morning: three temple prostitutes from Yuk-Chek’s rule, an artisan originally from Pharaoh’s city, three entire families of farmers from the southern part of Gethos, a wealthy jeweler, several fisherman, and so on. He knew them all.
And each morning they waited with questions as I came into the common room from my morning meditation. Every word I spoke hung in the air like smoke and they sustained their belief by basking in them.
This morning, as I stepped across the threshold of the common room, a roaring suddenly crashed in my ears. I fell to my knees as it rolled in my head and chest like thunder. A queasy feeling came over me. And I knew that the guardian wards I’d sent over the entrances to our compound were disturbed. And there was more, something unclean in the air. A queasy feeling swept over me.
“The watch,” I gasped. “The perimeter watch has been broken.” I straightened and pushed back the panic. “Do not follow me,” I called back. “Keep yourselves in the temple until I call for you, or until daybreak, whichever comes first.”
“Yusut!” a girl wailed, Drima. Yusut’s sister, I remembered foggily. They were two of the temple prostitutes from Yuk-Chek’s order. “She’s on the Eastern side!”
“I will do what I can,” I said. She nodded obediently, but did not look hopeful. Their faith in me was days old, and a fragile thing. Fear crashed through the crowd like a cold wash. They were lost again.
I was Djorkekt, the only living priest of Khumenakt. The feel of stone under my feet or air on my face was strange to me, but I could hear the rumble of Khumenakt with a sensitivity like no one else, and the stirrings of other things outside the temple. And I could feel the perimeter watch as something severed it like predator’s teeth. I didn’t think it was human.
The visiting bird and the strange hermit woman of the bloody rags left me feeling exposed. We needed protection. And the growing crowd of possible victims only increased my concerns. That was why I started the perimeter watch shortly after the second day of arrivals.
Four of our growing flock took each of the compass flanks in shifts. Khumenakt was growing in power. We could all feel it, a deep throbbing in the temple stones. His voice seeped through the walls each dawn and dusk, though none so powerful as the roar that vanquished fat Yuk-Chek and his minions. During the middle of the day and the deepest of the night, it became the quietest of murmurs. The new arrivals could not hear it right away, but it came quickly for many of them. Sometimes only hours in the temple, or in prayer. The connection was a comforting presence.
Reports of things that moved out in barbarous Gethos grew like old sailor’s stories. But I knew about the stirrings before the rumors. I could feel the creatures of the gods take over Gethos. And the stories grew. The festival of the dead was a time of renewed belief.
Busa the fisherman told of the beast that took his boat, bigger than the king of all hippopotami, and twice as long, sleek and toothed as no crocodile he had ever seen. Fishermen that could afford days without food shunned the river. The casualties among the rest grew each day. One of the cattle brought in went missing, and the stories began to grow.
Yusut, one of the temple girls, the girl on the Eastern side, swore she’d seen the dead walk. She had come to find refuge from the memory of an old lover, long since dead. She would not speak of it when she first came, until he was seen lingering around the compound late one night. And of course, Ay’s tale of how his wife and my boys were killed circulated around our growing band of refugees like honey bees. Ay knew nothing of my two visitors on the day I found him, and neither Menna or I mentioned the encounter.
One of the women that came was pregnant, and neither Ay nor myself were surprised when the child came still born the next day. We mourned, but quietly, with as little fuss as possible. I allowed them to prepare the body, though I knew that there would be no ka to pass into Osiris’ realm, for Horus did not move around to collect the dead souls. Then I wasn’t sure how I knew this. One more fragment, like the remembrance of a dream.
Since the circle’s commencement, we maintained the watch night and day. No one talked about the bodies that we sometimes found in the morning just outside the perimeter. After the watch, they started feeling safer. Yusut’s lover disappeared, the cattle came home safe and the only persons and animals in our compound were benign and mundane.
Except, of course, for myself.
I stepped into the chill night air. The moon hid behind impending storm clouds, offering no help. It was only twelve steps out of the door and down the shallow steps to the Eastern point of the circle, but I saw no one. When I got to the Eastern edge, I found nothing. No Yusut, no body, no sign of attack. I wasn’t very surprised. I could feel her death.
A trickle of stone behind me, and I whirled, my lion-headed rod thrust in front of me. Ay nearly cried out in alarm, a threshing pole clutched in his huge fists. No more ridiculous than my rod. Neither would serve against the kind of enemy we feared.
“I thought I told you to stay inside,” I said. He gave me a defiant look, but didn’t otherwise respond.
I felt a conflict inside me watching Ay. The part of me that knew him, Druset, was dwindling each day so that I only recognized him in flashes. Djorkekt was needed more than Druset, and so he stayed. It was Djorkekt that stretched his senses during each meditation, Djorkekt that could feel the watch circle break.
And Djorkekt that whirled to face the menace behind me, badge of office thrust outward.
How they moved silently I couldn’t fathom. Huge dogs with fur the blackened crimson of blood seen by moonlight and eyes that shone in total darkness. Horses did not stand so tall, and no horse ever laughed around a long muzzle full of crocodile’s teeth. I could see at least half a dozen of them, and I could feel scores more of them lurking unseen in the shadows.
The nearest of them was sitting, unconcerned, with Yusut dangling from his snout the way a small rodent would fit into a dog’s mouth. Her dirty feet didn’t quit reach the ground. The dog opened his mouth and casually let Yusut’s body flop to the ground. Only the torso showed any blood, though her back twisted with the extra bend of a broken waterfowl. It had been a shake of that bulging neck that killed her. They hadn’t bothered to feed. Animals did not act so. Its pointed ears perked up, like a cat’s as it regarded me levelly. It had an air of patience and awareness the other dogs lacked, and was undeniably the leader. It sat unconcernedly by the pillar I'd carved my hieroglyph on. The mark was meant to support the warding circle, but that didn't seem to mean much.
“No!” the fat man behind me shouted, and ridiculously charged. He swung his threshing pole with surprising alacrity, but the sitting dog shrugged the pole off of its shoulder. Still half sitting, the beast lifted two huge paws and pinned the man to the ground. I could do nothing as the great head dipped down to the man’s neck.
Something in me caved as I remembered Ay’s name and watched him die in the same moment. One paw almost covered his face, and brutally smothered his short cry. Then some part of Druset died, with the boys, with Ay, and I was all Djorkekt again.
The pitch dog dispatched his attacker quickly, then paid the body at its feet no more attention. I could do nothing but meet its feral gaze. The other pitch dogs circled lazily around me.
The sitting dog barked like a boulder splitting in half, and leaned forward, its nostrils flaring. Then it growled like a killing thunderstorm voice and started forward.
I tried to shuffle backwards, but one of them had somehow gotten silently behind me. Before I could get my bearings the dog behind me nudged me with it's head hard enough to send me sprawling at the leader's feet.
I grunted as I hit the ground, the put my hands up as the lead pitch dog thrust his snout at me. I might have tried pushing against a landslide for all the effect I had, but when it nearly pinned me to the ground, it was only to sniff lightly at my robes.
I tried groping for a rock or stick, but the creature backed away and regarded me quizzically.
I sat up, breathing hard and desperately trying hard to figure out why it hadn't killed me. The rest of the pack roamed listlessly around like mountainous shadows. I felt my open hands for the power of Khumenakt, but it failed me. Just as the wards failed me. I felt nothing.
"I know you," I said out loud. "I know you, creatures of Set. And I know that he loves you for the destruction that you wreak, for such is how he made you, mighty and beholden to no one, not even himself."
I still wasn't sure that they understood me, but I thought they might. Anyway, the lead dog still regarded me with a curious stare. I went on.
“Khumenakt’s death would affect even the desert, and the powers there.”
And now I knew that the creature understood, for it snorted in an obvious gesture of disgust. Suddenly it got up again and lifted itself onto its haunches. Then it turned as the others drifted off into the darkness and the red, red tongue lolled merrily. A grating sound much like a laugh poured out, if such an evil snarling grating thing could be called a laugh.
It barked once, and I cried out in pain and clutched my ears. The pain made me fall to my knees and cry out.
Most of the dogs melted away into the darkness, though one paused. It stopped nearly on top of me, and lifted it's leg to piss against the stone pillar that I'd carved my warding hieroglyph on. I held up my hands as some of the piss splattered of the stone around me. When it was done, it loped off into the night to join the others. Lastly, the leader went, still laughing.
I pulled myself out of the puddle of reeking piss. My breath came in short gasps, a pounding that echoed the pitch dog’s laughter thrummed in my ears. My mind brushed away the last traces of my old self, and far, far away I could hear a growing roar rising.
It took me a moment to realize that the growling came from me.
I knew what I must do next.
Chapter Thirteen: The Cries of the Banished
The phoenix was sometimes associated with the Egyptian creation myth, a flaming bird representing the emergence of light out of darkness, often seen perched on the pyramid. Stories of Ra, the creator god of the Egyptian pantheon, tell about his emergence from the primeval waters at the beginning of time. He came from darkness and gave birth to two gods who created another two, and who in turn created another four - thereby bringing about the Ennead, the nine primordial gods of ancient Egypt.
Appropriately, the pyramid in Egyptian art is sometimes divided into nine triangular segments, the one at the very top representing Ra, and the ones below representing the eight gods that followed.
Sivku’s Story
“Perhaps if you used longer strips?” Bolis said cheerfully.
“Quiet,” I snapped. I struggled with wrapping the hopelessly ragged strips around Bolis’ wrists. They were culled from his own torn clothing and not fit to wear, so I thought to make them useful. His enormous wrists crossed were easily the size of my head. I threw up my hands in disgust.
“Just attempting to be helpful. I could see that you were having trouble.”
“I can see things that you have never even dreamed. Visions of cleansing, burning infidels and the ashes of all Gethos being swept away. You know nothing of what visions have been given to me.”
“How about this?” I asked, wiggling my fingers at his face. “Can you see this?” I even used my left hand. I was starting to get used to the missing finger.
He must have had some idea that it was unpleasant. A slight frown slid over his face and then was gone. He moved his hands behind his head, leaning against the rocky outcropping. He moved slowly, so as not to disturb the sleeping boy lying nearly in his lap. Bolis flexed slightly, and I heard cloth tearing.
“How clumsy of me,” he rumbled. His head was in the shade, but somehow the wetly glistening eye sockets reflected the sun.
“There are other ways of keeping you in line,” I said. Patting my knife so that it clinking slightly on the ground.
“That,” he said, “has already been tried.”
“Quiet, both of you,” Menhu said. His tone was distracted as he peered into the hot desert afternoon, but his words still carried enough weight that we both lapsed into a hostile silence.
We were waiting out the heat of the day, sitting underneath the scant protection of the prow shaped outcropping where we had first found the two of them. The little shadow did nothing to cool the rolling waves of heat that washed over us, and the scent of baking sand and sweat. Menhu had wanted to leave at once, but not even he could budge Bolis, who insisted that the boy would never survive such heat. Menhu grudgingly agreed.
“Quadesh Tul-hannah. Ik taruklahem gif pulan?” A guttural voice spoke into the silence, causing all three of us to start.
“Perhaps,” a woman answered, soft and sensuous. “But there is no certainty.”
We stared around and then looked down. “Ushan nel Atikados” another voice said into the stunned silence.
The voices came from the sleeping boy. Now they were coming one after the other, tripping over each other in a nearly unintelligible stream, except for a few that thundered over the rest.
At first I absurdly thought the boy was speaking in his sleep, however strange the voices. The boy’s mouth hung open in Bolis’ lap and did not move or twitch to form the words. But the voices issued from his open mouth as if echoing from the cave mouth of a long, unexplored cavern. They fluctuated wildly in volume as the sound did not fill the area, but rather pooled in odd places and rushed in others like smoke.
“Kulhuk mo turseen ful Quadesh!”
“What in Set’s name is that?” I nearly shrieked.
“I have,” Menhu said very slowly, “no idea.”
Something about Bolis’ expression trigged me. “He knows! I can see it in his face!” I scrambled to my feet and pulled my knife. Menhu did not move. Bolis only lay a protective hand on the boy’s chest. I waved the knife in Bolis’ direction, feeling somehow both frantic and ridiculous.
“I knew you wouldn’t save a boy out of your good nature,” I hissed. “I don’t know what that is, but that’s what you wanted. Maybe a weapon?”
Anything else I might have said was drowned out as a howl raged from the boy. Different than the voices, but thrown from the boy’s open mouth. It was acrid and far away and reminded me of when I badly burned myself in one of the cooking fires as a child. The shriek coiled around the stone for some twenty heartbeats before echoing off in all directions.
“I don’t know what’s happening to him,” Menhu said flatly. “Or what you’ve done, but I do know Pharaoh’s patrol will follow that noise from miles away.” He flexed his hands and I remembered with a rush of fear how Pahiri had died.
Bolis nodded and leaned over the boy, whispering into his ear. After a moment, the boy seemed to stir and then fall asleep again, but this had a natural posture, snuggled into Bolis’ lap, and his mouth was closed. Bolis nodded again. “There, you see?”
Menhu didn’t seem to be satisfied, but he said nothing.
But it was not to be that easy. The boy never woke, and Bolis spent the last few hours of daylight feeding him small morsels that the sleeping child would reflexively swallow while still asleep. And any time Bolis would stand and stretch his legs, or break contact with the boy for any reason, the noises returned. An enormous snorting and thudding like temple-sized mating bulls, and after that an eerily similar sound, but more human, the woman moaning and chanting in a sibilant language I had heard out of trading visitors from the south. Several times other voices, but muddled together, pouring over each other like spilled grain. Thunderstorms and the sounds of battle rolled intermittently in the background.
“So loud…” This voice sounded dramatically different, and with a shock I realized that the boy’s eyes were open. The boy’s own voice shocked me with it’s normalcy. His eyes looked pained, with dark circles. He looked exhausted.
“Usis,” Menhu said suddenly. “I couldn’t remember his name until now.” There was a strange tone in his voice, and I thought his expression might have softened momentarily.
“Easier to remember his name when you’re not about to kill him, isn’t it?” I hissed.
“Shhhh,” Bolis said gently to the boy. “They cannot hurt you.”
“It’s them, isn’t it?” Usis said wearily. “The ones that want to come back.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bolis said. “They are far away.”
“But they are returning, aren’t they?” Menhu said. “And it frightens you more than death.”
“There will be no return,” Bolis said forcefully. “Only cleansing.”
“Who?” I said. “Who’s coming back? From where?” Fear rushed through me again, a constant companion.
“No one speaks of the banished Ones anymore,” Menhu said.
“And with good reason,” Bolis said, his voice deadly quiet. “For to speak it is punishable by death, under Pharaoh’s law.”
“It seems there may be more things out there than Pharaoh,” Menhu said thoughtfully. “I heard stories of corpses walking during the festival of the dead as a child, but I hadn’t really believed. So much has happened these last few days that I forgot what time of the year it is.”
“Who?” I said again.
“The old gods,” Menhu said wonderingly. “I’ve never thought of them as something that could be lost, or that had voices. And never as something that could fight Pharaoh. Nothing is like that. Anyway, none of the stories ever talked about gods returning from the dead, but then there was never a need.”
“Blasphemer!” spat Bolis. “Pharaoh is a god! Sooner fling yourself at the sun as battle his magnificence. Divinity does not bicker to itself like a room full of children. The Aten and Pharaoh are like one.”
“But it seems the gods are not in agreement, after all.” Menhu’s voice betrayed his awe.
He spoke to me, ignoring Bolis’ glare. “You would not remember, as you were probably just a child, and not born of this land anyway. There used to be other temples, prayers and priests of gods not mentioned today. Until Pharaoh told us that those were merely faces of Aten, the one true god, and forbid their use.”
“But now,” he continued. “The banished Ones are speaking, and they sound restless.”
No one said anything after this.
We started as soon as the night was a faded rose, with Menhu ready long before the day was gone. The outcropping was already gone from sight before night slid in. The moon hung like pale fruit in otherwise empty darkness, the missing part of the circle looking for all the world as if some huge beast had taken a bite. The moon lit the dune peaks, but left the hollowed out valleys untouched, creating a striped glossy landscape of silver and shadow. The cool night air sluiced away most of the hot sand smell. The sand’s heat was noticeable around my sandals. It would stay that way for a few hours yet. A chill wind made me shiver, but the wind comforted me anyway as I looked back and watched the eddies fill our tracks. Several dunes back, the silver strips showed no traces of our passage. I wrapped my pilfered clothes tighter around me and struggled to keep up.
Somehow, Bolis led, carrying the boy, and Menhu and I straggled after. Menhu looked content to follow, as long as we went in the right direction. And somehow we did. Bolis trudged monotonously ahead of us, as if he would never stagger or stop. He carried the boy without any signs of effort Lost, blinded and near killed by the desert, and he was sturdier after one day’s rest than either of us. I gritted my teeth and tried to figure my chances of hamstringing the bastard from behind. One slash across the back of his legs would do it. Would Menhu be quick enough to stop me? Could I escape him after I’d done it? Maybe. I would have preferred to escape him in the dark, but the moon lit upon us like an illuminating hand. I remembered the night I had seen the pitch dogs attack. The moon had been almost full, then too.
“Isn’t this the fifth night in a row the moon has been like this?” I muttered. “Shouldn’t we see the whole thing by now?”
Menhu gave me a peculiar look before shrugging. “It’s always like this during this part of the year. It’s the festival of the dead.” He spoke as if that explained everything. The moon’s light silvered selective pieces of his face. Making his expression a further enigma.
I staggered through most of the night, the monotony broken only when I fell. Between watching Bolis and listening to the voices of the banished, I hadn’t gotten much sleep. After my third fall, I felt hands helping me up. Menhu. The venom must have shown in my face for he snatched back his hands as soon as I was on my feet. I hadn’t forgotten his choice behind us in the desert. His eyes flickered wide, and his mouth opened as if he might say something. Then his face settled into its habitual blankness again and he turned back to following Bolis.
We beat the Aten’s rays into the outskirts of Gethos by a couple of hours. A path of sorts made of packed earth started and wound between two squat buildings, each with a matching doorway facing into the courtyard. Darkness cloaked the insides. A huge pile of corn loomed shoulder height to one side of the path, flanked by two large boulders to keep it from spreading. A few small boulders littered the open space. I didn’t see any people. The only sound came from the light rustle of the desert winds.
Bolis sat by the corn, using one of the stones as a chair. I gloated. Even he needed some rest. I collapsed next to another stone nearby, trying to be watchful with drooping eyelids.
“It seems this year, the festival has gotten out of hand,” Menhu said from the other side of the corn pile. He kicked gently at something on the ground. His face carried the same bland disregard he usually wore, but tension tightened his voice. I knew what I would see when I got up and stepped gingerly around the grain pile.
She’d been elderly, and was now many days dead. I peered more closely.
“Ugh.” I covered my mouth. The desert sun had not been kind. In addition to the rotting, her neck was barely attached. “Sword cut,” I said.
Menhu raised an eyebrow at me. “How can you be sure?”
“I traveled with him and that little brat of a nobleman, remember?” I said acidly, jerking my head towards Bolis. “You get to see a lot of bodies that way. Animals don’t leave a body like this, headless and all the meat still on.”
Menhu nodded thoughtfully, then stalked off to check inside the houses. I left the body and returned to my seat, determined to keep a watchful eye on my least favorite clergyman, body or no body.
I must’ve fallen asleep, because I jerked awake suddenly. Bolis was standing right next to me, a mere silhouette against the hot and blood-colored backlighting of the rising sun. He was turned half away, but not so much that I couldn’t make out the hooded shape of his face, and the barest hint of a cruel smile. I didn’t see Menhu anywhere.
Bolis’ eyes flashed, and I could smell something burning. A thick curl of smoke spilled upward into the open sky and the grain burst into flame a moment later. I flinched and fell back from the sudden bonfire. The smoke grew heavier now, a giant column.
Chuckling quietly to himself, Bolis went back to Usis. I just stared. I thought about trying to smother it, but the fire was enormous. I thought that the grain would burn itself out quickly, but somehow it continued to burn and smoke for several minutes. I could think of nothing better to do than curse and wonder over and over again where Menhu had gotten to.
When he did return, he came running down the path from Gethos.
“What in Set’s name?” he said accusingly. “I expected you to watch him.”
My answer stopped short. Hoof beats thundered from behind us, and I turned to face an invading horde. At least a dozen mounted warriors drove their horses into the small enclosure from the desert side, followed closely by more on foot. I turned and discovered four running warriors closing the gap between the buildings, cutting off any path into the city. Two of these wore grim smiles.
They knew their business, cornering us before we could do more than plant our backs against the mud wall of the building furthest from the bonfire.
Bolis merely stood blindly to one side, cradling the young boy, as always. There was a look of recognition from one of the riders, but little else.
The rider guided his mount easily past two others to appraise Menhu and me more closely. As he came closer and squinted I sucked in a silent breath. His eyes were predisposed to squinting, and slanted upwards in the corners. His dark hair and lighter skin tone mirrored my own. Most of the others carried the same features, in varying shapes. One of the riders laughed shrilly and I looked more closely. A woman. Women never marched in Pharaoh’s army. They all bore a ragged but lethal assortment of weapons and armor, many in disrepair and without any conformity.
Brigands. And Hyksos, like myself.
The leader stared down at us from his horse, then smiled. He wore some kind of skin draped over his shoulders, with matching leggings, that made him look wild and warlike.
“Challah,” he said. Then lifted his voice to be heard over the jangle of metal and the restless stomping and blowing of the horses. “We have a sister among them.”
“She is mine,” Bolis called out harshly.
I felt a chill come over me, and vowed to battle my way to either freedom or death. Death might be my only possible freedom, and one I meant to seize, rather than be Bolis’ prisoner again.
But the Hyksos leader only threw back his head and laughed, loudly as if from a tavern joke whispered by small children.
“And what would you do with my little sister, should I choose to give her to you?” he asked Bolis pleasantly.
“There is no choice,” Bolis thundered, and I had an image of how he had risen to Chief Prophet. “You made that when you answered my call, which is as good as the word of Pharaoh to the likes of you. As it always has been. You roam these hills only by his good word, and as long as you do his bidding.”
“Ah,” said the Hyksos leader jovially. “But now things are different, or maybe you haven’t looked around much, no?” Two grinning brigands, with their weapons still drawn, drew closer to Bolis as their leader went on. “There is no festival, with happy people and running children here anymore. Now people hide in their houses, and they say monsters roam the streets. Pharaoh’s little cousin is killed and no troops of Pharaoh have come. No one has been brought to justice. And you…” Here he paused and gestured grandly at Bolis. One of the women tittered.
“You don’t look so good.” The Hyksos warmed to the subject. “Pharaoh’s guards are no longer seen in the street, and his armies are gone. What are we to think?”
He paused, and then: “Do you know what I think?” Bolis didn’t answer, but it didn’t bother the bandit. “I think that this Pharaoh is not so liked as the last one, not so strong. I think that the people miss the old ways. I don’t think they like him very much, and then who do you turn to when things go bad in this little town?”
“You?” Bolis sneered. This prompted another bout of laughter from the bandits.
“By the gods, no!” laughed the bandit. “But when people don’t have anyone to turn to, it makes them more easily frightened. And that,” he pointed his finger, “makes for good business. And it means that we no longer need Pharaoh’s permission to roam in his hills. So that is settled. If you are good, we will drop you off to Pharaoh, or close by, unharmed. If you are trouble…” he shrugged.
“And you…” the bandit continued, and now all joviality disappeared as he turned back to us. “You have already caused us too much trouble. I thought we had taken care of you last time. If you had been cooperative, then it might have been different between us, but now? Now I promise you a very long death.”
My head spun at this change. Until I realized that he wasn’t talking to me, but had his eyes locked directly with Menhu’s.
The look in Menhu’s eyes made me step back and remember the night he’d crashed into the play performance for Lord Hurin like a wild animal. Since then, he’d shown only glimpses of that ferocity. Now the memory leaped back to me like a stalking beast.
With a strangled yell, he launched himself at the brigand’s horse, but the men around moved smoothly to intercept him and the length of a sword plowed easily into Menhu’s stomach before he had finished the first step.
I cried out, my anger forgotten, and tried to step forward. One of the men by me swiftly pushed me back against the wall, pinning me there.
“Ah no, little sister,” he said sympathetically. “There is nothing to be done for him now.”
Menhu spilled into the dust as another brigand, one of the women, clubbed downward with her hilt on the back of Menhu’s skull before he could get up. Amazingly, Menhu wasn’t quite down. There was no blood. Somehow, the first brigand must have struck with the flat of his blade. Intentionally? I wasn’t sure. I wondered how I felt about watching him die and bit my lip.
The man wrenched Menhu’s head back and the woman was there with a knife to his throat.
“This will be the second woman that I have stolen from you,” the brigand leader called out.
Menhu’s face went blank. He exhaled slowly and both of his assailants folded like abruptly discarded puppets. Menhu remained kneeling for a moment with his palms out, and then rose shakily to his feet.
“Can you hear it, Hyksos?” Bolis shouted into the chaos, still clutching the child and staring off into space as if uncertain where to hurl his venom. “You will wish you had chosen better before the day is gone!”
“Accursed fisherman!” the Hyksos leader swore, ignoring Bolis, but instead shouting at Menhu angrily. “Why won’t you die?” And the Hyksos were on Menhu again, this time bludgeoning him quickly to the ground before he had a chance to retaliate. I turned my eyes from the brutal beating that ensued, but I couldn’t block out the dull thudding of metal and booted feet striking flesh, and the hostile shouting.
“Enough!” roared the leader, and then in a calmer voice. “I have promised this one an unpleasant death, and so it shall be. Not yet.”
“Huya, Yaro,” one of them answered, and the brigands reluctantly backed away, but most did not lower their weapons. Menhu's face was blooded and crusted with sand beyond recognition. In the sudden near silence, Bolis’ chuckling echoed gently off the stone walls. The leader’s face turned violet.
“Bind them both so they cannot touch anything,” he ordered his men. “And we shall deal with the fisherman after we see how badly Pharaoh wants his priest back.”
Bolis looked for a second as if he might struggle when they approached the still sleeping child, but gave the boy over without a fight. The brigands began lashing the wrists and ankles of the two men to lengths of cane so that the cane sticks could be slung between two horses. The two men dangled like slaughtered cows, their hands and feet lashed together and draped over the sticks so that their helpless hands and feet pointed to the sky while the rest dangled. I wondered what a sunburn on the bottom of my feet would feel like.
“What are we to do with this, Yaro?” the man with the dangling child asked. “The boy’s head must be bad to sleep as he does.”
“The boy’s head is not bad,” Bolis answered. “He is blessed, and if you dare to try and bargain with Pharaoh, the boy is worth twice my asking price. And twice the punishment should he be harmed.”
“Very well,” the Hyksos leader said cheerfully. “We shall bring them all. You can carry him in front of you, Illis,” he said to the man.
He expertly whirled his horse back to face me and I got the impression he did little that wasn’t from horseback. He reached a hand down to me. “And you little sister? Do we need to tie you like a captured dog as well? Or would you care to be more comfortable up here with me?”
“I have no love for either of these men,” I blurted out. “But I’ll not willingly trade one kind of captivity for another.”
“And I do not mean to offer you one,” the Hyksos said seriously. “I merely offer a seat behind me as we have no extra horses, or you may walk, if you wish. Either way, you may keep your weapon and stay or go as you choose. Most of us here have been the slaves of Egypt in one fashion or another. The appeal of desert life is the freedom, however short lived it may be.”
“In that case,” I said, taking his hand. “I’ll ride.”
“Come then,” he said as he pulled me up. “Let us get away from this city. It is very good for business, but very bad for restful sleep. I prefer the desert.”
He whistled twice and turned his horse back into the desert. It took less than a minute for the entire band, captives, walking soldiers and all to abandon the edge of town. I looked back at the two bodies they had left in the warm sun, company for the old woman, surprised they did not prepare graves of any sort. Then again, what did they or I care if these people were received by the Aten. That was only for Egyptians.
“Know you, desert people.” Ludicrously, Bolis was shouting from his dangling position. Preaching to anyone that might be in earshot. “Any that oppose the Pharaoh are doomed, for his is the hand of righteousness, and the power of the Aten.”
“You look around, and you see the chaos in this day, and think yourself untouchable by him, as this place is untouched. But a cleansing is coming, just as it was cleansed before, when the Pharaoh, upon Aten’s command swept aside all offending religions. They were perversions, mistakes, fallible reflections of the sun-disk, like looking in a quivering pool, and thinking that the Aten in the sky is cool and ripples with the wind.
“Ask the cat worshipers of Bast if they were untouchable when shown the true face of the Aten. But alas, you cannot do such a thing. For you could never find one. Ask the Jackal-headed Anubis if he was untouchable, but then you could not find a place of worship for him, no statues or temples remain in his honor. Ask the people of Gethos who remember the last cleansing, who remember the lion’s statues being pulled to the ground, his name broken and erased for all time, his temple women absorbed into the temple of the sun-disk or cast into the streets, his loyal priests broken and turned, and all who could not be turned destroyed. Ask any of the people of Gethos if they truly believe themselves untouchable!”
“I’ll show you untouchable,” one of the Hyksos growled, and started a game of lashing the backs of Bolis’ exposed thighs from horseback. I did not fight the wicked little smile that came to me watching that, but it did not completely break the priest’s spirit. My hand fingered the long healed welts that still laced my legs.
“Ask the wandering priest,” Bolis went on, a little hoarsely. “Cast off from Gethos in an futile attempt to escape the justice of Gethos, if his life was untouched!”
“Over there,” I requested, and the leader, curious perhaps, allowed his horse to drop back to their side. I reached out and snatched the long quirt from the other bandit’s hand.
“No,” I said firmly. “Like this.” I leaned nearly level to the ground, hanging tenaciously to my host, and swished five strokes in quick succession, putting every scrap of weight behind it that I could. He screamed out on the last two, his monologue broken at last.
“Like that,” I said, handing the quirt back to the bewildered bandit.
The leader’s laughter bubbled out of him, and I clung to his back as he cheerfully spurred his horse back to the front of the ranks.
It took us the better part of the day to reach the oasis. A flat pool fed from the deeps of somewhere, resulting in a muddy little patch in the desert. But it was water, life away from the jealously guarded Nile.
The bandits dashed around with a raucous order. They possessed no tents, or the like, but tasks such as washing and weapons care busied them.
“What have we here?” one of them called out laughingly. The man stood waist deep in the pool at its deepest. He held aloft a sheer wrapping, such as an expensive courtesan might wear, pulled from one of the bushes. “Another gift from Pharaoh’s troops, I think. “
“We shall have to leave them something better than Rafu’s codpiece this time,” another yelled back.
“The next thing decorating that bush will be your head,” Yaro called out. “Or have you forgotten what has just happened this day? The Pharaoh’s troops will be playing for real now. Best we do the same.” He went and knelt by the pool.
“Should we post lookouts, Yaro?” one of the men asked.
Yaro nodded as he scrubbed his face in the muddy water. “Yes, and keep them sharp tonight. When Pharaoh finds out what we’ve done, his troops will stop merely pretending to look for us. And be ready to ride should they find us,” His serious tone broke as a grin split his face. “If they try to blunder after us in the desert, then we shall teach them a thing about how to live out here.”
Laughter followed, but Illis chose men to take the first watch within minutes, sending them out immediately.
Illis also directed two of the bandits to stake out Menhu and Bolis. Both were barely conscious. Bolis’ whipping had striped his skin as well as any slave’s. Menhu's face was still caked with dried blood. Neither man woke as they were stretched out and tethered, though Menhu moaned. The only sign that they still lived. Yaro did not bother to order any medical care for them, but he did visit long enough to trickle some water from a flask down each of their throats.
“Uch,” Illis grunted. He’d come silently up behind me while I watched Yaro. “This will be bad for both of them. Yaro is not a man to be crossed lightly, and has waited long for this. It might have been better had he not gotten them both.” I was surprised to hear a note of genuine sympathy in his tone. He handed me a flask of something.
I drank, and tried not to choke on the stinging contents. I didn’t know what it was, but it was stronger than wine or beer. I took a second sip, and he raised his eyebrows.
“What did they do?” I asked quietly, handing back the flask.
“The priest has long been a nuisance to Yaro. As for the fisherman, he had something Yaro wanted, and wouldn’t give it to him. So, being Yaro, he took it. Any other fisherman would have let go. Everyone along this part of the river knows Yaro’s reputation. But this man crept into our camp to try and take it back.” He didn’t cough when he drank.
“What did Yaro take?”
Illis gave me a look that might have been a warning, but then shrugged and spat into the ground before taking another drink. When he spoke, it was casual, as if discussing the cycle of the Nile. “Yaro took the fisherman’s wife. That crocodile necklace was hers. And then, when the fisherman came back for her, he beat him to near death, and took his woman in front of him afterwards, as a warning to them both. That was some time ago. But it didn’t work, he came back again, and again. Haunting us these last few months like a hungry cur. And this made Yaro twice as angry. He loved this woman, in his own way, and saw it as a betrayal. He should have killed the fisherman then.”
“He didn’t do anything?” I said.
“I didn’t say that. I said he should have killed the fisherman.”
I thought our conversation was over, for Yaro stood up and started over our way.
Illis left me the flask and turned away, and I almost missed his last words: “What Yaro did was kill the fisherman’s wife.”
Illis walked away without looking back, and I could hear Yaro’s footsteps crunching in the sand as I watched Illis go. Finally, I turned to greet the Hyksos leader.
“Well,” said Yaro with a great white grin. “I see you have started without me.” He took the flask from my grasp, and smoothly hooked his arm through mine, leading me towards a small fire the others had started. Some of them were unpacking instruments, a small drum and a flute of some kind. I thought briefly of Brother Aster and the rest of the troop as Yaro leered at me and asked: “Shall we dance?”
Chapter Fourteen: A Step to Redemption
A son of the Pharaoh Khufu once entertained him with this story:
A magician once had an adulturous wife, who cuckolded him with a beautiful young man in her service. The magician then created a tiny wax crocodile. Knowing that the youth bathed in the lake each evening, the magician had the wax crocodile thrown in the lake as the youth entered. Suddenly, it turned into a giant living reptile, and snatched up the youth, taking him down to the bottom of the lake. The magician then told his Pharaoh of the story.
Calling up the crocodile, it dropped the youth, unharmed, before the two men. Telling of the adultery, the magician commanded the crocodile to take the youth again. It did as commanded, and disappeared with the youth, never to be seen again. Pharaoh commanded that the adulterous wife was to be burned alive, her body destroyed, and her ashes tossed into the Nile.
Djorkekt’s Story
I felt myself returning through a constricting fog, a sliding of thought and emotional content. Like the captain of a doomed ship, who stands at the turbulent prow staring deeply into the whirlpool that threatens to swallow everything. A familiar spectacle of late. I breathed deeply, trying to reorient myself. I lay for a few minutes on my face before the discomfort forced me to move.
A foreboding settled upon me like the first few traces of a killing frost. I weakly lifted my head off the cold limestone. The air stung me with the chill that holds for only moments before the sun warms the air. I couldn’t see very well because of something trickling into my eyes. The trickling turned out to be blood, a thin line clotted along my face and stung my eyes. My forehead was bleeding and sore, and when I knuckled my eyes clean I could see the splotch of blood on the limestone.
Then I lifted my eyes and saw all the people crowded around me. Their silence made them seem eternal, as if they had always been there, hidden and only now suddenly revealed by the rising of the sun. I would have thought them frozen by the cold, a long stone dead gallery of familiar faces, but their eyes overflowed with a wild fervor and the look of ashes.
Menna leaned over me with my staff of office clutched possessively in her hand. I reached for it automatically, but then faltered. I found myself pondering the texture of the carved stone worn smooth by much handling, and the rich, creamy sheen of the gold lion’s head. I longed for it, but sensed it was somehow mine no longer. Menna’s expression didn’t change, and she did not move.
“One for the Aten! One for Set!” The group thundered like a sudden thunderstorm.
“The Guardian of Gethos has called you, Djorkekt,” a single voice. I twisted my head to see Drima towering over me. “And you shall answer, as you have always done.”
“One for the Aten! One for Set!” The crowd shouted again. Everyone but Menna and Drima.
I understood now where Menna's visions and dreams were coming from. A chosen of Khumenakt, more so than I, or perhaps just different. I didn't know.
“There will be two, one old and one new, to speak for him.” She went on.
“One for the Aten! One for Set!” My head was starting to hurt even more.
“Your task is no longer in the temple, but out in Gethos.”
“One for the Aten! One for Set!”
“We send you with his blessing, and our own.”
The chant went on, and I bowed my head.
“You will serve Khumenakt and the city he protects,” Drima told me. “You were the first and only you, who have been banished and returned, can serve for this. All is going as Khumenakt has foreseen.”
“One for the Aten! One for Set!”
“You are being sent to battle the forces of Pharaoh. You will carry the war to the Seat of the Aten itself should the Son of the Sun not bow to our wishes.”
“Enough!” I bellowed, and startled them into breaking their rhythm. I rose wearily to my feet. Apparently, the idea that I might not cooperate shocked them. I was like a god to them yesterday, and they still remembered. “Where does this knowledge come from? Who do you…”
A noise like boulders smashing interrupted me. Once, twice, three times and all of us staggered and nearly fell as Menna stamped the badge of office into the limestone stairs. She gestured, and after a moment’s frightened hesitation, Drima scampered back into the temple and returned moments later with a book. My translation sheets bundled together into a large volume.
“Here,” Drima said.
Menna stamped the badge again, but this time the noise started low.
Menna gestured again, and the taller woman knelt beside her so that the young girl might lay a small hand upon her brow. While the woman spoke, it was Menna eyes that blazed the challenge.
“Aten is mighty, but he is not all,” the woman called out. The rumbling increased. “And he has stepped into places that are not wholly his. When the bright spears of light pierced his eyes so that he could not see, he did not cry out. When the heavy fire burned him so that he could not bear himself erect and walk like a man, but only twist and burn as a flaming corpse, still he did not cry out. But when they took his name, all divinity could hear the roar, as you hear it now. Listen…”
And Menna opened her mouth to let the angry roar of a god roll out.
“One for the Aten! One for Set!” The chorus found its voice again.
Last time, I remembered Menna hiding. Not now. I stumbled back off the steps before the power of Khumenakt’s roar. It shook the stones and caused the dust to dance in the air. Humbled and confused, I set my jaw, clamped my hands to my ears and ran from the temple, setting my dusty feet on the sand of Gethos.
I heard the voices of the temple acolytes long after I stumbled down the street. My clothes were torn, but someone had given me a long knife hooked like the Ibis’ beak. It felt comfortable in my hands, but I tucked it into my belt.
Gethos was a shambles. I remembered long ago, before the Pharaoh’s reformation when I had joined a war party that penetrated into Hittite territory. We killed everything that could be killed, and burned the rest, preserving only young women and valuables, which we took. My backward glance at the devastated streets came back to me now as I moved through my home city. The streets once crowded with visitors for the festival held no one, only the sand blown in from the desert. The houses were broken and empty, many burned. I thought of the Hittites, who dared to defy Pharaoh, and the patron of Gethos, who did the same. I didn’t know if we would fare any better. Did the Hittite peasants deserve it? Did we?
I wandered into the center of town. Only vague memories remained of my life here as Druset. Was this the way that I came each day to display my art? I thought I discovered the ink seller’s home, a squat building of mud brick. Now the door lay in splinters just inside the house. I didn’t have to go inside to see the bodies. I could smell them from here. It looked like they’d been killed for their supplies.
I remembered the ink seller and his family, but the details slid away from me. I fingered the wall where the boys used to pin a covering to shield us from the sun each day. But I couldn’t remember their names, and it took me several minutes to remember what we sold. The details of Druset’s life. Different from mine. Was he dead now that I’d returned? Certainly I, Djorkekt, was dead before. Where was Druset while I was here? Was he also a displaced Ba, searching for justice?
I didn’t see the net until it dropped over me. Stones followed quickly, buffeting my trapped arms and knocking me brutally to the ground. I clutched at my knife, pulling it from my belt. Someone started dragging the net with me in it. A few more stones thudded ominously close to me.
“Get him boys!,” a voice called shrilly, from the roof. “Or I’ll have to feed one of you to Sobek!”
The crocodile god of the Nile. Khumenakt’s return heralded many other returns. And they came back unhappy.
The net was old, and with many rotten parts. It parted easily when I cut at it. I rolled with the sliding net, getting my feet back underneath me.
Boys indeed. The band of blood thirsty crocodile worshippers, a gang of small children, moved warily to cut me off from escape. I didn’t recognize any of them as local children, though in my state that meant nothing. If they recognized me, it didn’t matter to them. Probably the children of traders and other visiting festival goers. Almost twenty of them, not counting the few on the roof. Most of them held stones knotted into the end of dirty rags, or else held the stones bare. The dirty faces regarded me with fear. I was still old, but my priestly garb proclaimed my station, ragged though it was. And the knife arced smooth and restlessly through the air. A few hurled their stones, but I batted them out of the way with my free hand. They didn’t know what to do with someone who escaped the net.
“You worthless rats!” the woman shrieked. “Don’t you know what happens to cowards? The get eaten! Get in there! It’s only an old man with one knife.”
I could see the different fears twisting their faces, and didn’t envy them. The nearest dozen screamed little high pitched parodies of war cries and recklessly ran at me. I slid into a low crouch, almost to their level, thrusting my front leg to tangle in the legs of the boy on my left flank. The children next to him slipped aside to avoid running him over. One of them took a wild swing that I deflected into his young comrade’s naked leg. I managed to lay my hand on one boy to my left and pushed with my ka and he fell like dropped bones to the ground. Quicker than death by a knife.
Half of them broke off their attack and tried to retreat, confused already. I hunched my shoulder to protect my head from three or four thrown stones. The knife swept the area to my right, dropping one boy who didn’t pull back in time. I toppled another off balance boy on my left, and stomped on his knee when he landed, eliciting a thin, high-pitched wail.
I shuffled back to the wall before they could take advantage of my exposed flanks. My face split into a grin. My shoulders and back throbbed. Two of them were dead immediately, but the one with the broken knee and the boy who’d been hit by his friend both rolled on the ground in agony. Neither would walk again.
“Boys,” I said with a casual air I didn’t really feel. “Superior numbers don’t help if you rush one or two at a time. And you need better arms. Perhaps a few good spears, now that might do it.”
The two in the front glared belligerently at those behind, looking for support.
“Damn this,” said another, and turned and ran. This decided several others. I kept up my grin while the others thought about it, and then they too retreated hastily. Four of them dragged the wounded boys behind them, heedless of their injuries. The people on the roof, mother and favored brood, were already gone. I didn’t chase them when they fled, but sat back wearily against the wall. My war-time reflexes weren’t forgotten, but I longed for the youth of my adversaries.
“Poor Quolin,” a small voice said. The boy I’d cut was still alive after all, but barely. He turned to look at me, twisting awkwardly in a pool of blood twice his size. “At least I won’t be fed to the monster in the Nile,” he said. “At least there’s that.” Then his eyes glazed over and his face relaxed. I stared dumbfounded. I didn’t have time to ask which one had been Quolin.
Finally, I felt ready to walk again. “Lets see what’s happened to the rest of Gethos,” I mumbled softly to the dead boy. “Maybe I can help them better than I helped you.”
He didn’t answer, and I walked slowly, wondering where I could find whatever had done this, and also wondering what Khumenakt, Menna and Drima thought I could do about it.
Chapter Fifteen: Visitations from the Western Lands
Apep was the great serpent, the dragon of the underworld. Apep, lord of darkness, was the arch-enemy of Ra and attacked his royal solar barque every night as it traveled through the underworld. The solar barque was successfully defended by the hosts of the dead, led by Set. Set was known as the strongest of the gods and the only Egyptian deity who could kill the serpent Apep - Ra's most dangerous enemy - each night as it threatened to swallow the barque.
Rerira’s Story
The dreams continue with a growing force, like a disease.
I am with Set in this dream, but not in any proper way. In the dream I am Nyphthys, and Set and I are together in a small boat, fishing. To see his magnificent profile, all glittering eyes, snout and teeth tending to the small tasks of fishing is ludicrous to me, but to my dream self, all seems idyllic.
The vision of Ra glittering off the Nile in his first few moments of glory. It is early morning and we ride the Nile in a narrow boat, dragging a long net behind us. The boat is soundless, and the Nile nearly so with only a soft gurgling now and again. In the back of my mind, the part of me that is not captured by the dream is cringing, wishing desperately to prostrate myself before his magnificence, but my dream self feels no such thing, and as the wife of Set, his touch is familiar and we find small excuses to make contact in the rocking boat. My thigh against his as we pull the net together, my hand on his back. The knowing touch of a lover, of husband and wife.
We hear the coming danger, a vibrant thunder, but in the dream we pay it no mind. The water ripples and still we fish on, oblivious. Set turns his glittering eyes and then palms my chin and turns my face toward his. The carnivorous features are gone and it is the troubling desert man from Gethos that stares at me. He opens his mouth to say something and the horizon tips as the boat shudders and leaps underneath us.
Another blow and the boat shakes as if all of Egypt bucked underneath us. The sound of ripping wood crashes in my ears and I fall into the Nile. I gasp and founder and when I clear my eyes of the water a monstrous serpent rears into the sky. Apep, the monster that Ra rides through the underworld during the night so that he may burst forth each morning.
The head is black, ugly and flat, an immensity that blocks out my view of the morning sun and the surrounding sky. The ruins of our boat slide off its head and fall into the water somewhere. It is mammoth, and I wonder ludicrously where the rest of the body is under water; it is far too large to fit in the riverbed of the Nile.
A rough group of men on horseback linger on the side of the riverbed, laughing. One of them gestures obscenely, and the rest echo his stupid grin. The sun is shining where they are. Still laughing, they wade into the Nile and effortlessly pull me from the waters. I am too weary to struggle.
The beast cants back its head and I can see in silhouette that something twists in the grip of a battalion of scissor teeth. My husband. One flick of the brutal head, and my husband is gone, and the cry of anguish is ripped from my throat like a burst organ. I hurt, and I scream again, and again…
And I wake from the dream with the scream still burning in my throat. My legs and arms have begun to fragment in a panicky reaction to my fear, leaving only my screaming upper torso writhing ludicrously on the floor. The birds are unfocused, but remember the panic, if nothing else, and they whirl around the room, cawing their own echoes to my human screaming. A burning hatred cascades through me at being so undone, and it is the anger more than anything that gives me the strength to pull my mind back from chaos and push back the panic. I call back my traitorous limbs until I have absorbed them all and am whole again. I am shaking all over, another physical rebellion. Nothing has ever happened to me before, and I am at a loss to explain it. The nightmares are getting worse, and are undeniably linked to the man from the desert. The meaning eludes me, but the fear is clear.
And my course is equally clear. It is as Pharaoh says. When the desert man is dead, then the mystery will be without weight. The dreams will die with him. The rest of the forces centering around Gethos I will deal with, when the time comes. Only this man worries me. I don’t understand the source of his power over me. I’d felt nothing like it when I encountered the older priest, or even near the shrine of the Sleeping Lion. There is a slumbering strength there, of course, but far less than mine. I have few normal agents at this time, and anyway, they are unreliable and can not seek him as I can. The children I have now I need for the last few days of the Festival, and I have no wish to expose myself. But then, I don’t have to be the instrument of his destruction.
For that I will use the storm crows. They should be close by now. And when they arrive, I will nurture them so that they can feel him as I do. The storm crows will be useful to the last, as well as expendable.
I lay recuperating as I waited, detaching only the smallest part of myself to lead them into my sanctuary, and nursing the ragged stump of my left arm from which I’d shaped it. It is a disturbing loss that I’d never noticed before.
The raucous cry of my fragment winging its way into my sanctum heralds the arrival of my creators. Like so many children, I am so much more than they, and they writhe in my power. Unlike most children, I will raise them from their dotage.
I lift my arm even as I stalk towards them, and the fragment melds easily to me. I flex my newly reformed fingers and boldly seize the taller of the two, the Nubian. He resists, but I fling him effortlessly into a corner of the room, where he collides with a long unused table of Yuk-Chek’s, filthy with sooty feathers and feces. He groans and does not move. He will wait.
I turn to the storyteller himself, and he meets me with beatific rapture as I draw him back to my place of slumber, Yuk-Chek’s abandoned bed. The anticipation of my pleasure dispels the last traces of trepidation and discontinuity inflicted by the dream. No other sowing has taken place here, and perhaps he knows he is special, for he shakes with desire, standing like a young colt by the bed as I remove his shredded clothes.
He is ready for me as a young man for his bride. For this sowing, I do not need a death to bring him closer to the Gate of Set and the Western Lands. This man has spent his entire life binding himself to our master. His khu need not be taken, it is already Set’s. This kind of prey is a rare treat, and I will have two, and they will be the most prized, beloved of my children.
I fall back onto the bed, pulling him irresistibly upon and into me. He bucks and shudders. Through me, the power of Set rolls through him like a lover’s touch, the profoundly painful touch of death, fingering each piece of his soul as he strokes inside me. Death comes, but without an end, something only possible during the festival of the dead. He screams and writhes and clutches himself to me with feverish passion. His loyalty outshines even his humanity, which dies as we near culmination.
He barks his final release in my loving arms, and bursts into fragments that scatter and twitch in palsied motions across our nuptial bed. I dispatch several fragments of my own to gather the helpless scorpions into a pile in the corner. It will be days before he will find his way into human shape again. It will be painful, but no other worshipper of Set will come so close to godhood from so low a start. A true blessing.
The other man whimpers in the corner, and I relish the opportunity to repeat the grand performance. Perhaps I will take more time with this one.
The summons rouses me painfully from sleep, like a water snake pulled reluctantly from soothing waters. I disentangle myself from the pleasant confusion of my newest nestling, careful not to damage any of the fragments. There is a general squealing from the rat fragments as I leave the bed. They each move in one motion, like pouring water or schooling fish to the edge of the bed and continue their high pitched nearly mindless complaints. There they are close enough to each other to connect, but it will still be some time before they can reshape into the Nubian. Only then will he think like a man, and then he will be able to remember what he was, and begin to understand what he has become.
The squealing rats’ cries are echoed by an agitated skittering from the pile of scorpions in the corner. The storyteller has progressed much faster, his greater faith carrying him through the worst of it. Already I can make out his dark eyes nestling in the rustling disarray of so many saffron legs and swinging stingers. Does he remember yet? Will he speak first? Or walk? My own transformational memories are clouded, and the process fascinates me. I pass through the crowded pile, avoiding the accreted center and careful not to step on any loose fragments, which range farther out than the Nubian’s. Already he grows confident. His is the greater transformation, but I could not have chosen his shape otherwise. His greater faith deserves it. And also, the Nubian’s great affinity for the rat prompts that shape. It idly occurs to me that I have not seen the actual pet the man brought in with him, and I wonder if they are one now, pet and master both caught together.
“Now, now, my children,” I murmur with a smile. “I will not be long.” They are a pleasant distraction, and far too precious to be trusted to the nursery. The only true difficulty is keeping them separate from each other as they gain enough intelligence to become jealous for my attention. Neither will ever reshape if I allow them to lose fragments.
I reflected briefly on my own vaguely remembered “childhood” under the care of these two. And what might I have been before? It matters not.
The pull of the summons interrupts further musings, harshly. I would ignore it at my own peril. I disentangle myself from the storyteller and move to the still lit candle. Pharaoh’s response is immediate, once the connection is made.
“Don’t ever keep me waiting, shadow crawler.” His tone was mild, but I shivered. It is easier this way, when I didn’t have to look at him, but his voice alone reminded me.
“My respectful apologies, Son of the Sun,” I say. “My children are almost ready to be unleashed on Gethos, and I have something special in mind for the desert man.”
“It’s too late for that,” Pharaoh snaps. “He’s with Bolis and they’ve got something I want now. I can hear them, but I can’t feel them the way you can. I need you to find the way so that I can send the phoenix. It will collect what I want, then it will deal with the desert man.”
“I…I cannot,” I stammer. “The phoenix would surely…”
“Don’t be stupid,” I can hear him sip something expensive, and the soft clanking of rings on a golden cup. “You are both exclusive creatures of the Sun and Moon, you cannot cross paths. My men are camped in the desert. Find them and lead them to the desert man. I will handle the rest.”
“Yes, Son of the Sun,” I murmur. “But it is a subtle thing out in the desert, like swimming through waters warmed by another creature’s presence. It may take some time. Perhaps days.”
“Then,” Pharaoh says softly. “You had better get started.” The candle sputters out as he breaks the connection.
“Yes…” I hiss, and I fragment without further delay, bursting out the nearest window. The children will have to fend for themselves.
Take me to Part Four: Chapters 16-20