“No thank you, my queen. I should be leaving. Just let me know if it’s as good as it looks.” Nehi bows to her and takes his leave.
With shaking legs he walks out of the palace and to the temple. Rahotep waits for him in the most sacred chamber.
“Is it done?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I must inform the Queen. Tell no living soul of what has happened,” Rahotep says before leaving.
His anguish finally unleashed, Nehi falls to his knees with a sob that shakes the sacred walls.
Inside, Aniya inspects the strange fruit. It’s beautiful and perfect. She hesitates just for a moment, wondering how it will taste, and takes a bite. A sweet rush of juice fills her mouth just as a mark glows on the side of the apple. Aniya turns the apple to look more closely at it. The symbols for soul, Ka, and life, Ankh, burn golden on the flesh of the fruit and then disappear. Aniya takes a breath and falls to the floor still clutching the perfect fruit in her fingers before she can even swallow the first bite.
Darkness.
And movement.
Not unlike the buoyant motion of being on the Nile. A gentle rise and fall mixes with a slight side-to-side motion, repetitive, relaxing.
But this isn’t the Nile, at least, Aniya doesn’t think so. There is no sound of water lapping gently against a boat. There is a steady, quiet sound, but it is hard, not soft like the water. A scratchy, steady beat matches the ebb and flow of her body back and forth. After a moment, she recognizes it as the sound of footsteps. The darkness is not the night sky. It can not be, for there are no stars. She is being carried not by a boat, but by people. She nearly sits up in a panic, but the voice of a man echoes off the walls of wherever she’s being carried, and causes her to remain still.
“We won’t have time to begin the cleansing rituals today. Not with the final preparations for Pharaoh, and with his son’s naming ceremony tonight. There’s just not enough time,” the voice says.
Another voice answers, this one behind her. “This is very unfortunate. A queen of Egypt should receive better care. Especially this one. I had come to admire her adventurous spirit.”
“Me, too. But what can we do?”
“Nothing. You’re right. The embalming procedures will have to wait until tomorrow when we have more priests available.”
“Will this interrupt her journey through the Duat if we put off the cleansing until tomorrow?”
“I hope not. She will at least have her shabti with her, and all the other furnishings for her journey through to the afterlife. It is only her body that still needs to be prepared. Hopefully, her Ka will make its journey without a problem.”
They stop for a moment and the low groan of stone moving against stone fills her ears. More movement, and then she is set down. Aniya takes a breath and wonders why she still cannot see clearly. The darkness is less pronounced now. There is some light, but it is dampened, hazy to her eyes.
“Should we uncover her?” one of the faceless voices says.
“No. This burial shroud has been steeped in herbs and covered with a salve that will help to preserve the body until tomorrow. It will also help to keep insects and rodents away so the flesh will remain intact for the queen’s spirit to find her body. Come, we must go attend to the Pharaoh’s final ceremony. Rahotep will be wondering where we are if we don’t hurry.”
Feet move again, though this time Aniya doesn’t move with them. The light extinguishes completely and again comes the sound of stone moving against stone. And then finally, silence.
Aniya takes a breath.
And then another.
While she concentrates on breathing, she replays the men’s words in her mind. Burial shroud. Duat. Ka. They think she is dead.
Nehi walks as quickly as he can through the palace without attracting attention. So far it seems that few people know of what has become of the young queen. Probably the work of Rahotep, keeping Aniya’s death quiet.
No, not her death.
Her murder.
I did this. I killed her.
Bile gurgles up in the back of his throat, and he just makes it in time to vomit into a chamber pot in his quarters. Shaking and sweat covered, he falls to the floor. The words swirl in his head, a maelstrom of blame. I killed her. I killed her. I killed her.
He replays the entire event back through is his mind over and over. She never doubted him for a moment. And he betrayed her. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t stop himself. He should have tried harder. Done more. Her giant, trusting eyes swim before him and he sees her put down the child in order to take the poisoned apple from him.
The babe. What has become of her son?
Nehi sits up and wipes his brow with the back of his hand. His entire body is shaking, but he bites back against another wave of nausea and forces himself to stand up. He’ll find a midwife to take the child and hide. He owes Aniya at least that much.
Fear grips her heart. Why would they think she is dead? Surely, they know she can’t be. She’s breathing, thinking, obviously living. Her voice calls out, quiet and shrill at first as she tries to form words. She tries again. “Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?” Her voice echoes and circles around her. There is no reply.
“Hello? Can anybody hear me?” Only silence answers her along with the darkness.
Burial shroud. Burial. Death. Duat. Realization of where she is tingles through her body making her pulse race. The burial tomb. Deep in the heart of the queens’ pyramid, she has been buried alive.
Her breathing comes quick and tears prick at her eyes. Aniya feels the panic rising, but forces herself to remain calm. Concentrate on what you know, she tells herself. I feel the wooden slab beneath me. I hear my breath. I feel the cool air. I know I am alive. I know someone will come for me. She repeats the words over and over until the panic subsides to a level where she can think and plan what to do next.
Her body feels heavy, but she knows she must get up. She needs to find a door and get out of there. She needs to let everyone know she is alive.
The baby.
Realization that she’s been separated from her son hits her and panic overwhelms Aniya once again. Surely someone is watching over him. Surely. Of course someone is watching over him. The next boy king of Egypt is probably in the care of one of the midwives. She has no reason to worry. She tells these things to herself over and over again until her breathing slows to normal and she can think of what to do.
The first thing to do is to get up and get out of here.
A pressure holds her down and Aniya struggles against it as she tries to rise. The burial cloth. Of course. One of the men mentioned she’d been covered in one. She pushes herself more firmly but still can not sit up. Surely a mere cloth could not be pinning her down to the table so effectively. Aniya gathers together all of her strength, reaches out with her mind and her will, and forces her body up. Although she knows it is just a cloth, it feels as if she is pressing against the force of the Nile itself. She gives herself one more strong push. Finally free, she stands up and looks around the room.
She can see.
It’s the first thing she notices.
The second thing she notices is that there are no torches. No windows. No light permeates the room at all. It should be darker than the dungeon of the palace in this crypt, but it is not. A bluish glow permeates the room, radiating from all the individual objects decorating her tomb. The furnishings, the doused torches on the wall, the sarcophagus leaning against the wall ready for her prepared corpse, all of these things emanate the same azure hue.
A lighter, more intense blue shines from objects resting on the floor across the room and Aniya walks over to inspect them. Clay figures molded into tiny soldiers stand in a line. The tallest of them barely comes to her knees. Aniya picks one up and looks at it more closely trying to find where the blue light is coming from. She turns it around and around in her hands, but there is no evidence of the source of the light.
“A shabti,” she says placing the little clay man back on the floor with its brethren. She counts them. “Seven tiny servants to help me into the afterlife. Sorry to disappoint you,” she says to the little, clay figurines, “but I’m not dead. Looks like you’re not going to get much use.”
Aniya turns around to inspect the rest of room, and her eye catches on the ornate, wooden table she was laying on. She gasps when she sees the linen burial shroud is still in the shape of a body. With shaking hands she reaches out to pull back the cloth. It makes no sense. How could she possibly be seeing what is lying in front of her? Because it is her. Her white, waxen face even more pale in death than it ever was in life, is right in front of her. The eyes are closed but Aniya knows it is not in sleep. The body does not stir with breath or any sign of life.
This is a dream. It must be a dream.
Aniya reaches a hand to the face and flinches back when her fingertips rest against the still, cool skin that feels all too real and not at all dream like.
I have to get out of here.
She sees where there should be a door. It is covered by a stone slab. She pushes against it, but it doesn’t budge. She slams her shoulder into the rock, but it makes no difference.
The feeling of being trapped overwhelms her for a moment, and Aniya searches frantically for another way out. There is none. The room is circular, cut into the very heart of the pyramid. She remembers coming here once before when she was newly married to Akhenaten. She remembers the feeling of pride when she noticed how ornately her burial chamber was to be decorated. She didn’t think it would be filled so quickly with herself.
But I’m not dead. How can I can be dead and still be here?
Aniya looks around and notices the walls covered in paintings depicting her travel through the Duat. Aniya still has not learned many of the hieroglyphs covering the walls, but she recognizes one she saw earlier that morning when she bit into the apple. Ka, the soul. Next to it is the symbol Ankh. Life. The two markings are not painted, but etched directly into the stone wall. They glow with the same bright intensity as the shabti, and Aniya wonders why. She says the words aloud and presses her fingers against the symbols, looking for some hint that can help her escape when the wall shifts beneath her hands. She takes a quick step away as she watches the bright blue outline of an arch appear and then takes another step back as the stone of the wall disappears and an opening emerges.
She looks into the space beyond the door, but sees nothing beyond the initial blue glow of the stone opening. Beyond the threshold is nothing but black.
Aniya looks into the abyss for a long while. She searches the room for another door, for more symbols of life and soul, but sees nothing but the paintings that show her journey through the Duat, the realm of the dead on her journey to the afterlife. Although the pictures are meant to be of her, they look nothing like her. She knows they are the same for everyone, and that somehow gives her comfort. Surely others have gone through that door.
She pays more attention to the symbols, and though she can not discern the actual words from the writing, she notices that they seem to show the steps of her journey. The queen, surrounded by her servants is carried on a grand settee through the underworld. They brandish swords and torches. A river lies in their way, and they board a barge. Monsters from the deep attack, but the soldiers keep them at bay.
Soldiers. Maybe it would be a good idea to have some come along when she steps through that door. She turns back to the shabti she left on the floor. They are meant to be her soldiers and protectors in the afterlife. Maybe she could use them somehow.
She picks one up from the floor and holds it in her hand. Her mind reaches out for magic she can use to transform the shabti into a living, breathing servant, but there is nothing. If there is magic in the shabti, she can not use it.
“This is stupid,” she says aloud to the clay resting in her hands and places it back on the floor. She isn’t careful enough and too much force causes the shabti to fall over on the floor. Aniya grimaces when she hears a crack and lifts the shabti up to find one of its little fingers has broken off.
“I’m sorry,” she says aloud before she realizes she’s apologizing to an inanimate object. She lifts the finger up and tries to affix it back onto the figurine, but it falls back to the floor. When she picks it up for a second time, she sees writing on the shabti’s back. A closer look shows her again the symbol Ankh, life.
She touches it. Nothing happens. She knows this symbol is powerful - something should happen. She rattles her brain to remember what she did to open the hidden door. She touched the symbols. She read them aloud.
Aniya puts her hand to the back of the shabti and says the word aloud. “Ankh.” Life.
The hard, red clay grows soft in her hands and begins to move on its own. Aniya drops it on the floor once again with a yelp and the figure lands on its face but quickly pushes itself up. It picks up the broken finger from the floor and attempts to attach the missing appendage back onto its hand, but the clay finger remains hard and unchanged, and falls to the ground once again. The shabti’s head raises and regards her with an inquiring look on its face.
“I’m sorry,” Aniya explains by way of apology. “I didn’t mean to drop you.”
The shabti shakes his head and rounds his shoulder back as if losing his pinkie finger is no real concern. He takes the stance of a soldier and stands at attention, ostensibly waiting for her command.
“Should I wake the others, then?” she asks the little man. Although he says no words, the way he regards her speaks volumes enough. Aniya voices the words she knew he would say if he could. “Why is a queen of Egypt asking advice from a lump of clay, right? Well, pardon me, but this queen has never been trapped in a burial tomb with no one to talk to other than a small, clay shabti that magically came to life.”
The shabti seems to bristle at the mention of his short stature, but when the queen finishes and slinks down next to him on the floor he pushes forward one of the other clay figures as if to say, “He’s next.”
Aniya holds the shabti in her hands and says the word that brings the clay to life. The first shabti she awoke, the tallest of the bunch, brings the others to her one-by-one and she awakens all of them. One wears a scowl on his face and moves with clipped precision. Another is shorter and somewhat more chubby than the rest. The fourth brandishes his sword as soon as he is awakened and bows when he realizes he is standing before the queen. The fifth takes two tries for Aniya to awaken, and when he finally does, blinks his eyes drowsily before stretching his arms with a long yawn. The next moves so quickly into position next to the leader that his little legs are a blur. The seventh and final shabti, though the shortest of the lot, smiles broadly at the queen and bows before her with a great flourish of his sword. He swaggers across the floor to stand next to the rest of the clay regiment. When he steps into line the tallest of the shabti, the leader, motions to the others and they bow low before the queen. Aniya nearly bows back when she realizes that not only is it not appropriate for a queen to bow to her servants, but that she would be bowing to clay. “We are all just lumps of earth, fashioned as the gods see fit, are we not?” she asks them, and bows to them in spite of herself.
“Well,” she says, standing back up. “I wonder what else might be useful to accompany me through that doorway,” she says to the little men. They stare back at her, silent as the grave they’re standing in. Aniya realizes they will be of little help in this endeavor and begins to search the room for items that might be useful in getting her out of the pyramid. There are chairs, tables, decorations, food, even - but nothing truly useful. It is all embellishment and decor.
She lifts an alabaster lamp from one of the tables, wondering if she might find some flint to light it when the wick of the lamp combusts into blue flames on its own. Aniya tilts the lamp to the side and opens the top. There is no sesame oil inside for the fire to burn, and yet the blue flame continues to fl
icker on.
“Well, there’s this, then,” she says to the shabti that continue to silently monitor her every move. “At least it won’t be quite so dark when we walk through that door.” Aniya gives the room a final, sweeping search, but there is nothing else for her to take that will truly help.
“Funny that all of these things are meant to help me in the afterlife, but the only thing that seems remotely helpful is this,” she says, lifting the lamp.
The leader of the shabti raises an eyebrow at her. “And you, of course,” she says hurriedly.
Aniya stands before the black opening in the wall and holds the light up to it. The lantern illuminates a sandy path leading into an obscure darkness.
“Looks like this is the only way out for now,” Aniya says to the little men. The leader motions to the other six and they line up in height from largest to smallest and stand ready at the door. The leader looks up at Aniya, a look of readiness on his face. “Here we go,” Aniya says and steps into black shadows beyond the land of the living.
TWELVE
Pebbles and sand crunch under their feet as Aniya and the seven little clay men walk through the darkness. With each step, the murky black fades away to a cloudless pink sky and a hint of light shining on the horizon. Aniya glances behind to look back through the door, but it is gone. There is nothing but sand as far as the eye can see. The light of the lamp flutters and goes out, though there is no breeze to douse it.
The sound of water lapping reaches her ears before she sees the river snaking through the desert. Small black waves ripple against the sandy shore. Although there is no vegetation growing, no papyrus reeds or tall grasses for crocodiles to hide in, Aniya can’t help but notice how much the river looks like her own beloved Nile. A lone barge sits at the river’s edge, its loading plank lowered onto the bank.
Aniya turns around in a circle looking for signs of life, but there is only empty desert dunes and the piceous water of the river as far as the eye can see. The clay men stand and wait at attention, though the leader looks up at her as if to say, “What next?”
Spell Bound (A Fairy Retelling #3) Page 8
