Heart of the Lotus

by Mary R Woldering

  “I will kill that old man,” the prince whirled and headed to the whitewashed building where the young governor and his had family lived, “and this one in the pit, if he insulted her. I warned him to watch out for me.”

  Marai moved to stand in the prince’s way, but Maatkare shoved past him and into the shaded audience room.

  The Akaru sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his seat. His head was down.

  “You! Head up and face me,” the prince snarled.

  The Akaru’s head nodded back, showing that his eyes were closed. His lips moved in a self-calming incantation.

  As they had guessed, Deka was not in the room.

  “She’s gone? You tell me where she is or I swear I will cut you,” Maatkare bounded closer and drew his common dagger.

  Akaru continued his incantation, mouthing a few more phrases, unmoved. “The woman Deka? She is gone,” he answered after he had finished his chant.

  Marai frowned when he saw her scratches on the elder’s cheek.

  “It’s alright. She heard the words I needed to say to her, but then she left. I did not wish her to go. Truly, I did not. I pray to the gods she will return,” Akaru failed to contain his mixed emotions of grief, excitement, and rage.

  Marai strode forward, already hunched down to avoid the lintel over the doorway, and then crouched to check on the Akaru.

  Maatkare glanced around the room and plaza, then started to snarl. He gripped the hilt of his dagger; his expression cried louder than any words and told Marai: If something has happened to her I am holding you both responsible. Then, lashing out at the Akaru, he said: “I see you’re tired of living, old man. What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing. No – Thing,” Akaru rose, moving defiantly into the young prince’s challenge. “After all this you will still not understand that it was meant for her to ask these things of me and to search, as she has, to discover what she did. If you want to end me because I was a mere device in that discovery, then do so quickly.”

  “Then I’ll let you explain. Make your story good a good one and I will decide if you and your grandson suffer or end your days mercifully.” Maatkare closed his left hand on Akaru’s throat firmly enough to hold him steady for the downstroke of the dagger, but not firmly enough to choke him.

  “None of this is necessary.” Marai was about to jerk the prince’s hand away, when he heard Akaru gulp in Maatkare’s grip, but speak his words clearly:

  “If you would let me…” The Akaru’s long fingers extended up to the young prince’s cheek, then crept up to the stone in his brow. “She put these things in your heart for you. She does that to protect her own self. She hides things in other peoples’ hearts when it is too painful for hers to bear.”

  Maatkare suddenly released the elder and went to one knee. Both Akaru and Marai could see the disappointment worming through the anger in his expression.

  “Painful?” he remarked. “Pain is what this entire sepat all the way down to your beautiful Qustul Amani will know if your explanation fails to satisfy me. I have three hundred men waiting on the merest word of mine. They will send your head…” he paused and glanced sidelong at Marai, who had pushed the thought:

  Don’t make those threats until you’re ready to stand on them.

  “Damn you! Stay out of my thoughts,” he cautioned Marai, tightened his grip on the knife, and stared back at Akaru. “You tell me why she is gone and then tell me where.”

  Maatkare’s skin blackened and his teeth lengthened, dripping with foam as he snarled. His eyes grew golden and his ears pointed enough to emerge from his thickly braided hair.

  “She told you of her life long ago, did she not?” the Akaru of Qustul Amani took a deep breath and began. The corner of his mouth twitched.

  Maatkare slowly returned to a more human appearance as he calmed from rage to moderate surliness. “If she did, she must have left something out. You tell me, but don’t waste my time.”

  “You already know she is of this place. It’s why it burned in her heart to come here,” Akaru rubbed his throat and gently touched the scratch marks on his face to see if they still bled.

  “She was born here years ago, even before Qustul Amani was built up from the Land of Grass,” he smiled wistfully. “She appears young to us, but she is old and her power is even older. You see it now. I feel you craving that same power, to be with her in it, but you already know it isn’t for you. She seeks her own kind; that’s what burns in her. When she spoke with me, she remembered who created her inner fire. Know that whatever pleasure you give her on your couch has nothing to do with it. It is you who will end up being wounded by her; your heart torn out and burnt crisp.”

  The prince frowned, a mystified look on his face.

  Marai stood by passively, but gently read the young general’s thoughts of disgust and irritation combined with wonder and disbelief. The sojourner knew Maatkare had shared the memory that the women and he had slumbered for many years while the defects in their bodies were repaired.

  Something new, though, something I didn’t know. I assumed she was perhaps of twenty and five years when I found her, but now she is even older? Was she immortal already but cursed and then stripped of it? Marai moved away a few steps, indicating he wanted the Akaru and Maatkare to resolve the matter privately. The children’s ability is changing too, he thought. They knocked me and the ladies out in the protective setting of their vessel and took years to fine-tune us. With Djerah, they saved his life, but began modifying him right away while he was merely resting in the tent. Then, the changes continued each evening while he slept. Same with this one here. Wonder if it’s affecting all of us this way? Do small changes in us occur each time we sleep?

  It still galled Marai that everyone in his group would have to put up with Maatkare. If we must have this young beast, I hope they can make something decent out of this mess of a human they’ve allowed to be picked this time. But then, he remembered the Children of Stone once told him they could change bodies, life spans, and abilities, but not the will or hearts except by tempering the more extreme emotions. This was because the concept of individual and isolated thought was so different from their own mental processes.

  “So, she’s old,” Maatkare chuckled. “Doesn’t matter. She stays young and now so will I. Enough delaying. I have an eternity to hear her pretty stories myself. You’ve begun to bore me with your version of them.” The prince drew back, glancing around and preparing to leave.

  Marai’s eyes widened in disbelief that the prince was still so focused on Deka’s whereabouts that he couldn’t even sense where she would have gone. He was an excellent hunter. Her whereabouts should have been at the top of his thoughts… unless she had decided to block him.

  “Oh, you won’t find her, Your Highness; not if she doesn’t want to be found,” Akaru added.

  Maatkare paced in thoughtful silence, sorting the thoughts he and Marai were sharing and looking for a hint of something the big man or the elder had kept from him.

  “I have no secrets about her, Highness, so go ahead and dig away at my thoughts,” the sojourner huffed.

  “Then maybe you know why, after all this victory and the newness of it, after the thrill of running with me that she never hid, she would flee? It’s not a matter of having second thoughts – that much I know,” he sharpened his focus.

  “First thoughts,” Marai corrected. “First and always thoughts.”

  Maatkare paused suddenly, as if he felt something. He raised his fingertips to one temple and pressed it as if he was finally receiving a thought

  Then, Marai sensed it.

  Weeping.

  Nefira, Maatkare sent a silent answer back.

  Do not come to me, Raem. I am unwell.

  The child you carry? Perhaps it is more usual than you expect. Some women ail… but then he paused just as Marai’s face took on a haunted look.

  “I sensed that. We should find her and bring her back whether she fights us or not.” He re
membered, even though it was a lifetime ago, his negligence when his first wife Ilara had labored early. She had bled to death. “A woman should not be alone when she carries, no matter what she is telling you.”

  “Ah yes, that child, that child…” Akaru’s sarcastic voice rose. “The name she gave this child in her belly? Ameny?” Akaru inquired, taking a step toward the prince. “That was the name she spoke to me as well.”

  “Why would she tell…?” Maatkare frowned, thinking an unguarded thought. I thought it was something between us.

  “I suppose she needed to let me know what heka she was using to triumph over her past,” Akaru shrugged. Then, satisfied that he had said all he needed to say, he stepped back once again, appearing old and somewhat helpless.

  “Heka? To tell you the name of her child? More distractions, and meanwhile the distance and her cover grows.” The prince put his fingertips to his brow, looking as if he was trying to focus on hearing the elder yet silently continue his search for the missing woman.

  “I know you want to go and find her, when a sane man might run the other way and thank the gods she wants no part of him.” The Akaru continued his new tactic. “Perhaps that is why she says, ‘stay away’. She has used spells – naming magic, in the manner of the ancient goddesses, to entice a wandering soul into her belly, in case the seed of her lover has taken no hold. You do understand…”

  Marai studied Akaru in his lion-skin-draped chair, amazed.

  That was risky… impugning the man’s seed, especially his. Using his power to stall because he’s said something else he doesn’t want either of us to know. Deka is fragile. She needs time to think about all this if she’s with child.

  “I doubt she would need to do that. My seed has already been proven,” Maatkare snapped, but the elder governor continued as if he hadn’t heard.

  “And if you search your heart, you will find her own power, her heka has been at work inside you from the hour you met her,” the elder cautioned. “But here’s the last of it, since you will not consider the other things I’ve said. I called her to me. She came to find me, and then to find the one who sired her. What she will do when she does find him is her own mission, not yours, Highness. It is not yours either, friend Marai. She has only used all of us to come this far. I exposed that and told her I already knew. It terrified her,” he leapt from his chair, but moved behind it in advance of Maatkare’s irritated forward stomp.

  “I… I’m not listening to this, and you are a dead man talking. You and your priest spawn.”

  “And one more thing, Highness. My true name is Amenemhet – So I am the Ameny of whom she speaks! She is the one who sixty and five years ago birthed me! “Oh, and to be sure, he sealed her womb to all but his own seed. A child other than his was simply never possible unless he deigned to allow it. She knows this now, that she was created for his use as was I, why my look differs from the brown and black. I am an aberration, a freak of nature, not meant to survive, but something happened. I lived,” the elder quipped, then went on. “She is the daughter and the consort of he who is the lion of the wind and sun, whose names are many throughout the world here and far away, among them Aker, Re Harakhte, Resheph, Seth, Mandulis and Ptah Ta-Tenen as her names are many too. Shall I say them?” Akaru darted to Maatkare until his face was a hands breadth from the prince.

  “I should swat your lying old face and make your head spin so hard it snaps your neck. Lies. Lies and madness. If what you even think is true… There must be no gods over us if that disrespect is not heard by them! Ra and Seth the same god? Idiocy!” he crowed, stomping in a small circle before he whipped around to continue his tirade. “And you her son? She is not your mother! She told me she gave birth once, but that the child died.”

  “He’s right, though, Highness,” Marai interrupted, attempting to diffuse an argument that appeared to have no resolution other than a slaughter. “Deka is his mother. This other, about the god of many faces and names, I have no thoughts on it. None of this…”

  “Then you say you revealed this lie to her?” Maatkare snapped.

  “Highness…” Marai raised his hand, quickly sending a spark of energy strong enough to give the prince pause. “Killing him will feel really good to you for the space of an instant alone, after that…”

  “So he will live then, until I find her. I’m out of here and don’t try to cast anything to make me stay, either. I’ll just track her myself. She can’t have gone too far,” the prince quit the old man and headed past Marai toward the open plaza.

  Beloved, remember me as if it was our first day

  Will you dance the wind and rain for me?

  Grow with me, in the god’s eye.

  Rule as the wonder they intend.

  Deka’s voice entered Marai’s heart at the same time Maatkare felt it.

  Deka, let us find you; help you, Marai sent back a thought but then sensed Maatkare send his own thought.

  Nefira Deka, where are you?

  When there was no forthcoming response, the prince hurriedly gathered his things from the pile where he and Deka had thrown them when they arrived.

  The sojourner was about to say something else, but Akaru shushed him, his eyes twinkling. He began to use his ‘gentle breeze’ spell that he employed when Marai left to keep Djerah from getting killed. That time it had only slowed him down.

  As if that breeze gently blew the clouds and the resolution in the prince’s thoughts away, both men knew the elder was unlocking another image. Marai hoped Maatkare would pay attention.

  “But there was no child!” the elder cried out. “I told her that I knew she had tried to recreate me through her use of the goddess heka.”

  “Well so now she bled. I sensed it at first but put it from me. So, either the magic failed or you brought her to grieving enough to lose it. I saw that in my thoughts, you pale-skinned demon!” Maatkare rushed back to grab and end the elder, but Marai seized him.

  The prince struggled with him and almost instantly the men outside noticed and ran to the entry of the building. Maatkare shook loose, barring Marai and the Akaru’s escape. The old man shook his head and called out to the prince.

  “A determined woman can cause her moon flow to cease. Anyone who has studied healing arts such as yourself should know…”

  “Then damn you and curse everything about or from you,” the prince waved away his men and Marai released him, allowing him to follow them out.

  More men in the distance heard Maatkare’s angered shout and immediately rushed to the whitewashed building, ready to defend and destroy.

  “Do it,” he screeched in white-eyed rage. “Burn the rest of it as soon as I am clear. All of it. Kill anyone still here not in our company,” he shouted and blazed through the men, gathering all the weapons he could strap on his body.

  The Akaru moved close to the sojourner. The men looked about at each other, shocked at the orders, but moving as if they intended to follow them. As Maatkare tore out of the inner complex they shambled hesitantly, discussing where and how to start a fire that would consume anything left.

  “Go follow him, Marai. See in his wrath he does not hurt her. First, help me with Aped and our men, though.”

  Marai snapped a quick nod, and went straight to the dry well.

  “You. Sir!” One of the soldiers there took a step forward, blade drawn and threatening as Marai strode to the edge and peered in to see if the young governor of Buhen was safe.

  Two men, quick to follow orders seized Marai’s arms, but he locked his stance and snarled at the one on his right:

  “Don’t.”

  They pulled at him, but accomplished nothing.

  “Back off,” Marai hissed through his lower teeth. “I’m taking your prisoner out and you won’t harm him or anyone else here.”

  The young man in the well had risen to his feet and looked up expectantly.

  Marai noticed the rope the guards had used to lower the small amount of food and drink. It was still extended
down one side of the well as if they had dared him to climb up and give them a reason.

  “Aped,” he called. “Pull on that and see if you think it will hold you while I pull you up.”

  “Highness gave orders…” another guard started, joining the other two who randomly attempted to tug Marai backward.

  “I know what he said. I know he’s got bigger things to worry about than the governor here, and if you’re smart you won’t pull out those knives or you’ll be stabbing each other’s hearts out of the pure joy of murder.” The sojourner leveled a stare and sent a thought:

  Watch what comes up behind you. While you tend us, there is death behind you.

  One guard shrank, looking as he turned. Another screamed:

  “Shadow lion!”

  Marai focused on Aped’s testing of the rope while the guards screeched and fought the dark and lion-shaped snarling dust cloud behind them.

  “It’s good,” Aped shouted up and created a better loop for his feet. “Can you pull me?”

  “Grab hold,” was the answer and when the tall young man stepped into the loop, Marai drew him out of the pit.

  Aped paused in wonder to see a dozen soldiers tussling with each other and with a vaguely lion-shaped darkness, but Marai tugged at him.

  “You don’t have long. I can’t do the illusion forever,” the sojourner reminded him. “Get your grandfather, his guards, and any valuables you need. Go into the grass just the way you sent your families. When this is over, the king himself will help you rebuild Buhen. I’ll get Maatkare straightened out and then we’ll make our way back to Qustul.”

  “With the gods. May the ancestors protect us all,” Aped embraced Marai and headed into the white building where the Akaru waited.

  Marai laughed, added a lighter colored lion to the fray, and then trailed after the prince.

  Chapter 22: Learning to Fly

  Djerah helped men secure the boats coming down from Buhen the morning following Marai and the Akaru’s nighttime departure. The first night had been filled with fitful sleep after he watched them march away into the redness of the distant grass fire. He had wanted to go with them.