by Bill Hiatt
“Stay close together and—” began Jimmie.
The moment the ghost reached the doorway, it shuddered and vanished in an ice-blue flash. Would that the sound had ended as quickly! An unearthly scream echoed in my mind for several seconds more. If I lived as long as Hafez had, I would still be unable to forget it.
“God…what…what have I done?” asked Jimmie. Eva held him as tightly as he usually held her, but even that didn’t keep him from shaking.
“That wasn’t your fault,” said Viviane. “Hafez’s obscuring spell prevents us from analyzing the other magic in here very effectively. And it was Hafez who set that spell to…do whatever it did.”
“He knew he couldn’t alter reality enough to disorient a ghost,” said Tal. “His seer must have anticipated we might someday be here and try that move. My guess is every threshold has similar magic anchored to it.”
“So what are we left with?” asked Gordy. “Wander aimlessly here or go back and get ambushed by foes unknown?”
“I should have thought of this sooner,” said Stan—no, David. Stan wasn’t exactly light-hearted, but David always sounded more serious, more weighed down by his past.
“The staff is intended to be used by the pharaoh, is it not? Yet the Egyptian priests who crafted it in their blasphemous attempt to exceed the staff of Moses did not take immortality or reincarnation into their calculations. Apepi has the privilege of using the staff even though he has not actually ruled Egypt in millenniums. The same thing is true of pharaoh’s representatives, as Amenirdis makes clear.”
“Is there a point hidden in there somewhere?” asked Magnus.
“Learn patience,” said David. “It is clear that anyone who was ever pharaoh could use the staff, not just the current ruler—and there has been no pharaoh in Egypt for more than two thousand years.”
“So what?” asked Magnus. “It isn’t as if we have another pharaoh hanging around.”
“Ah, my impatient friend, but we do. We all know that Shahriyar was once Alexander the Great. Had you paid more attention to history, you would know that Alexander became Pharaoh of Egypt.”
Shar smiled. “First of three members of the Argead dynasty. I should have remembered that myself. But I have Alexander’s memories. I’ve never had his persona the way Amy has Amenirdis’s, or Stan has yours.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” said Tal.
Michael handed Shar the staff. He rolled it in his hands, carefully examining its carvings.
“I’m not feeling a thing. Is there any kind of ritual we need to do?”
“Amenirdis needed none to access the staff’s power,” I said.
“Tal…if you need to use the awakening spell on me, I’d understand,” said Shar.
“Out of the question,” Tal replied. “Right now, you have the best of all possible worlds—Alexander’s knowledge and abilities, but without Alexander himself fighting you for control or making trouble. It took us months to straighten out Stan. David was cooperative, but it still took the help of Hermes to repair the damage the spell did. We don’t have Hermes with us, and Alexander might not be cooperative. What if he decides he wants to use your body to reestablish his empire?”
Magnus smirked at David. “Well, that idea died a slow and painful death.”
“Maybe the idea just needs to be adapted,” said Carla. “What David said got me thinking. Unlike Alexander in Shar, David can be an active persona in Stan.”
“But I was never a pharaoh,” said David. “Nor would I willingly invoke the powers of false gods.”
“I’d never suggest that,” said Carla. “But we’re well into territory the Egyptian priests who crafted the staff never anticipated, so hear me out.
“The priests who started the process of creating the staff witnessed the miracles Moses performed, correct?”
“So the story goes,” I said.
“What if they didn’t fully understand what they were seeing? The ability to see and understand magic doesn’t always translate well into an ability to understand a miracle caused by God. That leaves open the possibility that the priests may have included features in the staff they didn’t know were there.”
“What do you mean?” asked Gordy. “You guys always say magic is based on stuff like intent and visualization. If that’s true, how could anybody cast a spell and not know what was in it?”
“God was working through Moses. An Egyptian priest watching the process might not have interpreted it correctly because it was so different from the magic of their gods. They would have been like programmers copying code in a language they didn’t fully understand. In striving to duplicate the effects God achieved through Moses, perhaps they inadvertently gave Moses and his heirs the ability to use the staff.”
“Moses isn’t here,” said Magnus grumpily.
“And we know not who his descendants might be,” said David. “Even in my time, there was no complete genealogy for the line of Moses.”
“But pharaohs were sometimes succeeded by people who weren’t close relatives—or relatives at all. In the same way, Moses was succeeded by leaders of the Israelites who were not blood relatives. Among them were the kings of Israel.”
“I still cannot invoke false gods,” said David. “I had sinned enough when I was first in flesh. I will not deliberately do so again.”
“What if all that needs to happen is for the staff to be carried by someone it recognizes as a wielder?” said Carla. “Is there any harm in trying?”
Shar held out the staff for David, who took it with a grimace, as if, like the staffs of the priests who had contented against Moses, it would turn into a snake in his hands.
I grimaced too—inwardly. I could not reveal how appalled I was that this Israelite would attempt to touch such a sacred object. I feared he might be struck down where he stood by the joint wrath of all the Egyptian gods.
Much to my mingled relief and disappointment, his hands upon the staff did not bring down divine wrath. Instead, a gentle light, bright but soothing, radiated from the staff. It looked and felt unlike the power of any god I knew. The light filled the entire room. The serpents of Apep stared at it as if they were blind.
David, smiling for the first time since I had met him, knelt in prayer. Magnus rolled his eyes, but even he restrained himself from comment. Both Khalids muttered “Allah be praised” in eerie unison.
“What did you do?” asked Viviane. “I think reality is still distorted, but I no longer feel it or the block to mental exploration.”
David rose. “God in his mercy has seen fit to send his blessing to me through the staff.”
“As He does with your sword,” said Tal. He squinted at the staff. “From what I can see, you aren’t interacting with the staff in the way a pharaoh would, but obviously the magic of the maze recognizes you as a rightful wielder, just as Carla suspected.”
“If what Stan said before was right, navigating this place is still going to be no picnic,” said Gordy.
“Ah, but now we can cast a guidance spell and walk straight to the pyramid entrance. I can already tell there is a person just inside the pyramid, but only one. That has to be the seer,” said Tal.
Carla and Viviane wove magic around us, and we began to walk. I tensed, but I made myself relax. The sensation of my legs moving without my conscious command was unnerving, but this would be the fastest way to reach our goal.
The rhythm the spell set was slow but steady. If I looked down at the floor, I could see gleaming footprints ahead of me, as if the spell were marked each step before I took it.
“Unlike the lost Egyptian labyrinth, this one is all below ground,” said Tal. “If I’m not mistaken, we’re under the Lost City Amusement Park. Only a part of the pyramid projects above the ground.”
“That makes sense,” said Shar. “I wonder how Hafez was able to camouflage such a big construction project, though.”
“He built by magic,” I said. “I…Amenirdis believes she can feel the magic of Ptah, patron o
f architects.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Tal. “I can feel magic in the walls now. It’s consistent with the stones being shaped and positioned by magic.”
Though each chamber was not identical, the differences were often subtle. The real labyrinth would have included tributes to various gods, but this one seemed to favor representations of Apep, to the exclusion of other gods. It was even more unsettling than the heresy of Akhenaten. Still, bathed in the light David was drawing from the staff, the serpents looked tamer and tamer as we went along. Representations of Apep himself became shadows, then faded away. I kept blinking. Was the light inducing hallucinations? If so, no one else seemed to notice.
At last, we passed through the final court and stood facing the entrance to the pyramid.
“Remember, weapons ready but not aimed,” said Tal. “The seer may well know we’re coming, but if not, we don’t want to alarm her. Let’s make the best impression we can.”
We passed through a large and ominously dark doorway, but David led the way, and his light banished the shadows as we progressed. We had to walk single-file down a narrow corridor whose walls were raw stone devoid of hieroglyphs or murals. It was slanting downward. I couldn’t help wondering how deep it went.
“The seer was just inside the door when we started our trek,” said Viviane. “She must be moving away from us.”
“Where is she now?” asked Tal.
“This isn’t good. I can still clearly make out the pyramid’s layout, but I’m not sensing her anymore.”
“Portal?” asked Shar.
“There was no obvious sign, and the kind of impromptu portals we use in Celtic magic wasn’t familiar to the Egyptians. Anyway, seers aren’t typically also sorcerers.”
“Though there are exceptions like Merlin,” said Jimmie.
“Is she still here or not?” asked Magnus. “If she’s fled, we’re wasting our time.”
“Where would she have fled to?” asked Carla. “Hafez designed this little hideaway for her to be impenetrable. It would have taken months, maybe even years. Would he have wasted time creating an equally secure spot if this one was breached?”
“Maybe,” said Viviane. “I’m inclined to agree, though, that he would never have expended so much effort unless the seer had told him it was necessary. We’ve pretty much wandered outside the area the seer foresaw, so my guess is she’s still here. How about a backup security system that masked the seer’s presence if someone, even a staff-bearer, got too close? Something Hafez could dismiss with a particular spell no one else would know?”
“If that’s the case, we might still be able to find her, but we’d have to search every possible spot,” said Tal.
“From what I can see of the layout, there aren’t a whole lot of open spaces inside here. Let me project the image I’m getting into your minds.”
I knew something of pyramid construction, but it still took my breath away to see the mysteries of the great structure unfold before me.
The corridor we were currently marching through offered two possibilities—a continued descent to a solitary subterranean chamber or a switch to an ascending corridor that connected either to what was known as the queen’s chamber or the king’s chamber.
“If I were trying to keep the seer away from other sorcerers who might conceivably want to steal her for themselves, I’d keep her as far below ground as possible,” said Magnus. “It wouldn’t be easy to discover she was there in the first place, but if someone somehow did, blasting through the upper levels of the pyramid to reach her would be marginally easier than having to burrow deep into the earth.”
“Agreed. Let’s try the subterranean chamber first.”
We walked past the connection to the ascending corridor. Instinctively, I wanted to go up instead of down, but Magnus—for once—actually had a decent point. I, too, would have kept a true seer as isolated from potential abductors as possible.
From Viviane’s image, I knew about where the subterranean chamber should be, but I had not expected to find what looked the door to a modern house at the entrance. It was white and appeared totally out of place at the end of an ancient stone corridor.
“It makes me want to find a doorbell to ring,” said Jimmie.
“The seer must know we’re here by now, said Tal, pushing open the door.
Inside was an imitation of a modern home. The entry hall led to a much larger room, done in Apep-snake wallpaper with desert-sand colored carpet, as if the place had been decorated using surplus supplies from the hotel construction. The sofa, chairs, and tables also looked like hotel leftovers—stylish, but not something most people would pick out for their home.
On the couch sat a woman dressed entirely in black, but she didn’t look threatening. Her face bore the marks of too much worry, as if her burdens were as heavy as the pyramid in which she dwelled. She wore no makeup, but her gray hair was neatly combed. She smiled at us and stood as we entered the room.
I heard a gasp and looked in Tal’s direction. His face had gone whiter than desert sand. Magnus and Michael didn’t look much better.
“Mom?”
Family Reunion
“I wish I were. Then I could have been part of my son’s life. I haven’t seen my Tal since he was a baby—except in visions. But…I couldn’t hold my baby in a vision.”
She shuddered, and her face tensed as if she were trying not to cry. Tal took her in his arms, and her tear flowed like the Nile in a good year.
Michael and—much to my surprise—Magnus, joined into a group hug with Tal and his mother’s counterpart.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” said the seer. “I didn’t mean for this meeting to go this way.”
“I can’t even imagine what being held prisoner for more than twenty years would be like,” said Tal. “There’s no need to be sorry about honest emotions.
“Mom…uh, what should I call you?”
“Sophia’s fine.” Her voice sounded less sad, and she had stopped crying, a signal for the group hug to end.
“I don’t understand, though,” said Tal. “In my world, your powers as a seer developed because of long-term exposure to me and my magic after my past lives awakened. But none of that happened here.”
“My abilities would have remained latent if not for Hafez. Despite the enormous powers with which the staff is endowed, it provides only rudimentary support for divination. He realized he needed a seer, and he began looking for one. He was in Santa Brígida to gain Ceridwen’s support—not a very successful effort, as you know. While he was there, he continued his search for seers, and he spotted my potential.
“You know already that Hafez has his ways of awakening magical potential or past life memories in people, just as he did in Amenirdis. Long before, he had practiced that skill on me.”
“That must have been terrible,” said Michael. “Did he get you to cooperate by threatening to kill you?”
Sophia reached over and ruffled his hair. “There were days when I would have welcomed death. Threatening me with it would have done little good. No, he kept me in line by threatening to kill my family.
“To show me he meant business, he kidnapped some random person off the street and killed him right in front of me. After that, I never refused him—openly.”
“So Ceridwen was right?” asked Tal. “She suspected Hafez’s seer was no happier with Hafez than she was.”
Sophia nodded. “It did not take me long to realize that his goal of freeing Apep risked throwing the universe into chaos. I couldn’t defy him directly, but because he had no way to double-check what I was telling him, I could give him advice that looked reasonable but that would undermine him in the long run.”
“I sensed how much Ceridwen had come to hate him. She was kept alive at my suggestion. When the time was ripe, I also advised him to recruit her. I knew that Ceridwen, like me, would only pretend to collaborate. As soon as she had the opportunity, she would betray him—and she did.
“With
all the parallel universes to choose from, I could have found a reincarnated pharaoh or priest who would have willingly gone along with Hafez’s plan. I apologize for suggesting you.” She looked directly at me. Her eyes were even more piercing than Tal’s or Magnus’s. “I knew you would not give that monster what he wanted without a fight.”
I felt Amy’s pain as she realized how much Sophia had changed her life. Rather than taking my cue from her reaction, I said what I thought would divert attention back from me to Sophia. “You did what you had to do. You’re right. Hafez needs to be stopped.”
“Unfortunately, that isn’t the only apology I need to make.” Sophia looked at everyone else. “I knew Amy and Ceridwen, even with her children, would be no match for Hafez by themselves. It is my fault that the rest of you got dragged into this.
“Once Amenirdis had been awakened, Hafez had no further need of any of you. He could have snatched Amy by herself as soon as he had a clear shot at her. It was at my suggestion that he brought all of you with her.”
“Why…why would you do that?” asked Gordy.
“Because I learned enough of your world to know what heroic feats you had accomplished, how much power you had. Finding Amy in the same world seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up.”
“Come on, guys,” said Khalid, looking at his silent friends. “If she’d had a way to ask us, we would have said yes, anyway, right? This is a whole universe—and more—that we’re talking about. We’ve risked our lives for less.”
“That’s kind, but don’t minimize what I did. As long as I live, I will regret putting all of you at risk. Seers only deal in probabilities. I can see possible futures, evaluate which is most likely—but I can never be sure. I may have signed your death warrant when I brought you here.”
“No, Khalid’s right,” said Eva. “We would have come if you asked, but you had no way to ask us.”
Everyone nodded. I felt Amy relax a little within me. She wasn’t happy, but she understood the urgency that drove Sophia.
“You’re forgiven,” said Tal, patting her on the shoulder. “Hafez is practically defeated, but we still have work to do, don’t we? Is Hafez’s doomsday device real?”
