by Paul Edwards
PUBLISHED BY:
The Hound of Kemamonit
Copyright 2015 Paul Edwards
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
THE HOUND OF KEMAMONIT
I am a crocodile.
I floated motionless, my eyes just above the water line, I saw a young furless monkey close to the edge of the great river. It looked like an immature male. Foolish monkey, not paying attention.
I readied myself, a gentle imperceptible flick my tail then a slow drift with the current, wait for just the right moment then a quick lunge.
I changed my mind.
Furless monkey's could be more trouble than they were worth sometimes, there was never just one and the larger ones could be dangerous. I had eaten a few days ago anyway, a tasty gazelle.
I felt a deep urge well up inside me, something ancient and primal, beyond my control. It was time. I had to find a place... a secret place away from the little scurrying things.
I had to be quick, the pressure in my belly was already building.
Chapter one
I woke up.
"God what a strange dream," I said to no one in particular.
I was alone in bed, the sun was streaming in through the bedroom window. I had had a lot of strange dreams lately, a side effect of my pregnancy I was told.
I looked down at my swollen belly, seven months three weeks, I rubbed my hand over it amazed at its size. The fetus was still asleep.
I had had an ultrasound but they had been unable to find out the babies sex. I remember being happy about that.
I rolled out of bed, my husband Peter had gotten up hours before letting me sleep in. I was at the point in my pregnancy were I had given up doing anything but what was absolutely necessary. If I walked for more than a few minutes my back would ache terribly. I was constantly hungry but could only eat tiny portions or risk stabbing heartburn, and my bladder had shrunk to the size of a cherry.
So I spent most of the day eating resting and peeing.
Not today however, I had a meeting.
I stood up carefully putting both hands on my back to prop me up. I walked over to the bedroom's adjoining bathroom, I looked at the shower and thought about turning it on.
"Had a shower yesterday... I think..."
I'll just slather on some extra deodorant.
I quickly brushed my teeth then looked at myself in the mirror. My hair now free from my daily ministrations had exploded into something that looked like a large black coniferous tree. I grabbed a scrunchie that was sitting next to the sink and attempted to force the bulk of it into a ponytail pulling it away from my face.
It looked a large rounded bush sitting next to a smaller one.
I saw a bottle of perfume also sitting on the counter as well, couldn't hurt I thought. It said channel five on the label.
I wondered about its odd name, probably inspired by a popular television channel before the thousand channel universe, I squirted a bit on.
I looked at the bottle again as I put it back down, I noticed channel was spelt wrong. One of the odd things about this era, people took great pride in spelling things incorrectly, using a z instead of an s for example or putting small i's in front of everything.
I walked over to the closet and pulled out one of the large comfortable dresses I had recently purchased. They were loose and easy to put on, something that had become important because of my recent condition.
I grabbed a handful of breakfast bars before I left the room and started walking down to the basement.
I lived in a large mansion in the southern part of California, it used to be the residence of a popular movie star during the silent era. It had been rebuilt many times but still had its original charm. The renovators keeping the same motifs.
It had been built in a secluded place, on a large wooded lot surrounded by a high stone fence.
It took me a few minutes for me to navigate my way to the basement, it was the only part of the house that gave any indication of my former profession.
I had been a sorcerer.
The basement was empty except for a few long wooden benches which were covered in various books, scrolls, and other paraphernalia.
There was a large stone arch in the middle of the floor, it was about eight feet high, the interior was empty framing the area behind it.
It was in reality a doorway, a magic one, it connected my basement to my current destination. The City of Magic.
I touched a series of carved symbols on the right hand side of the arch in a special order. The interior of the arch flashed with a bright white light then revealed a long corridor. I walked through and then closed a thick wooden door on the other side. I pulled a key out of my pocket and locked the door.
I was in one of the wings of the School of Advanced Egyptian Sorcery. The office of the person I had to meet was at the end of the corridor.
I heard the sounds typical of a large school, the scrape of chalk on a blackboard, the stern voice's of learned lecturers.
I started walking down the corridor, I looked through the open door of the first lecture theater I passed. I saw a pair of men, one very tall one shorter, lecturing. It only took a few seconds for me to realize they were teaching the basics of sleights of hand.
Not true magic, but a necessary skill for a competent sorcerer.
I felt my eyes narrow as I recognized the pair. They were popular magicians in the world I had just left but I suspected the larger one abused the smaller, even forbidding him to speak.
I passed another closed door, there was a sign on it that said Advanced Neural Networks Laboratory.
I heard something yell from behind the door.
"PUNY HUMANS!! I WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE INSECTS!!"
"Kill the spell... Kill the goddamn spell!!"I heard someone reply.
Good... I could see their research was coming along nicely.
I passed another door, it was open. I looked inside and saw a small lecture hall there was a large spell written on the blackboard.
I walked into the room to examine it, I saw a series of round circles that were drawn in such a way as to indicate they were flying through the air towards what appeared to be a barrier with a large target on it.
The writing was atrocious, the only words they had written that that I could sorta make out were wormlies and futons.
What a strange spell, I then noticed someone had labeled the circles in ancient Egyptian, they were called Imhotep Sphere's.
Ahh.... high energy magic, I could see some of the students were becoming quite proficient. High energy magic was quite strange, the effect you were looking for always seemed to appear at higher energies.
I saw a mistake in one of the lines of spell coding, I circled it then wrote the correction.
I felt a wave of nostalgia, for a second I felt like I was back in my youth when the city was still young. My servants and I would spend many hours working on new spells. We would fill up page after page of papyrus with scribblings, trying new ideas.
My servants had known just enough about magic to help me, but not enough to use it.
Sometimes we would work right through the night, drinking cup after cup of thick dark beer, It had been the reason I had invented my first light spell.
I wondered what became of them, I had sent them home when I thought my death imminent. An image of Gaya and Uranae filled my mind for an instant, I had met them on the northern shores of the great sea.
Gods what a pair, constantly fighting with each other, that is when they weren't having sex or clandestine relationships with the other servants. Did they marry? They had reminded me of one of my former apprentices neighbors.
Shelley had had a derogatory name for them... trailer trash... I think?
Then there was Koatlicu, she was brilliant but spent most of her time moping around making bitingly sarcastic comments. I had told her once that the Egyptian belief was that the heart held the soul of a person. It had been one of the few times she had been interested in something I said without acting haughty and indifferent.
Where had I met her? Across the first great ocean... maybe modern day Texas?
She would have loved all the vampire crap on TV these days, she hated the sun and adored the color black.
I walked back out into the corridor.
Time to get this over with, I thought to myself as I quickly walked to the end of the hall. There was one last door, it was a modern wooden one with a large frosted glass window. There was a black lettering painted on the window.
Dr. Janet Lincoln PhD
Dean of the School for Egyptian Magic
There was a line of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics underneath, it said:
Philosopher of Sorcery, doctoral advisor Kemamonit.
I smiled feeling flattered for a moment, the truth was she had learned most of her skills on her own.
I knocked on the door.
"Come in," I heard Janet's voice.
I opened the door and walked in, Janet was sitting behind a large wooden desk covered in neat piles of books and papers.
Janet was a tall attractive woman in her forties, she had been an athlete in her youth, she was still quite fit, she was dark skinned like me.
I plopped down on the comfortable chair in front of her desk, happy to rest my aching feet. I noticed two clear round lenses floating in front of her eyes as she read a paper on her desk, they flipped up when she raised her head to look at me.
"Damn eyes. need reading glasses now, how have you been?"
"Alright... I guess... you know the whole pregnancy thing... hope the kid appreciates what we have to go through."
Janet stared at me for a second and then started laughing hysterically, I felt a bolt of anger.
"Oh... you're serious... I'm sorry," she said when she saw my expression.
"Ya... well it's been tough."
"Geez... when was the last time you had a shower? You smell like a landfill... next to perfume factory," Janet pinched her nose.
I felt my eyes start to well up with tears.
"Well I'm sorry, I didn't realize hygiene was so important to you," I wiped my tears and stared at her defiantly.
Janet cocked her head and stared at me.
"I need a favor."
"What?"
"You ever hear of Archimedes?"
"Ya, of course, the lever guy."
"Hmm... interesting, you watched something on TV I'll bet?"
"Your point?"
"He was also a sorcerer, trained here at City of Magic no less, class of 265 BC."
"Really?"
"Ya, there's a big honking computer thing in one of the buildings near here, made by him, it's all brass gears and lever's. It's broken."
"Why do you need it?"
"We don't need it, it got turned on somehow, it's doing weird shit... instructors show up in the lecture halls sometimes... from the distant past. Rooms disappear replaced by different ones. I think he made it to automate the school, we tried to shut it down but it's so complicated we can't figure it out."
"Why do you need me?"
"Well here's the thing... the young version of him can't figure it out and the old version of him is just a crotchety stubborn old bastard who won't do a thing we ask."
"I have no skill persuading crazy old men."
Janet stared at me with an incredulous look on her face.
"Kem... I've personally seen you turn supposedly rational intelligent men into moronic idiots."
"I'm pregnant, it's too dangerous for me to go into the past, you'll have to think of another way."
"Dangerous... geez, you just gotta talk to him... god I was taking down Anthony Montana during my first pregnancy... or was it my second?"
Janet had been an FBI agent before she became a Sorcerer.
"I've heard of him... unpaid parking tickets wasn't it?" I felt my anger start to rise again.
Janet smiled.
"No way to convince you?"
"No."
"Hmm... so what have you been doing?" She said as she searched for something in one of her desk drawers.
"Um... you know baby stuff."
"I see... binge watching Bugs Bunny cartoons in other words... never did understand your fascination with that rabbit."
She found what she was looking for.
"He is a noble creature," I said resolutely.
"Have a look at this," she tossed what looked like a number of small cubes stuck together in an odd way.
I caught it then studied it carefully, the cubes were either black or white. I tried turning one and found that I was able to rotate it.
It exploded in my face.
