Wserkaf drifted between wakefulness and sleep. In the distance, there had been other sounds. Chattering.
Monkeys? People chattering like monkeys? Didju, you silly monkey, come back from the monkey afterlife to see me? He thought about the little brown pet. His sons had grown to manhood playing with him and taking him places. They even dressed him as a little priest and gave him a beaded collar. Two years gone, poor old fellow. He smiled, but it didn’t matter. No one was there to see. All the moments of time had folded in on themselves.
Someone had poked at him and decided he was either dead or too far-gone to worry about. More shuffling and arguing followed. Some voice said the word ‘demon’. At another part of his dream, he heard Hordjedtef’s dogs whimpering and yodeling. He drifted again. The water felt comforting on his hand.
Commotion. His eyes cracked open and he saw the most radiant face looking down at him.
Naibe, he thought at first, but the more awake he became he had realized that wasn’t possible. It was Khentie. Khentie. Of course. I knew you’d come. Where’s Naibe?
“Naibe?” he asked the air then heard Khentie answer.
“No. Wse. It’s me. Don’t you recognize me?”
Wserkaf pulled Khentie’s head down, his eyes beginning to clear. Naibe was a dream of a poignant moment in his past. Wet on my face. Crying? What has happened? He tried, then succeeded in speaking, even though his throat burned.
“I …know…you…, Khen,” his hands were shaking. He felt her take them in hers and kiss his fingertips.
“Naibe… here,” he insisted, wondering why Khentie, who he had cried out to first, was here and Naibe was not.
“Wse. No, beloved, she is not here.”
Wserkaf felt the sadness in her voice and knew his thoughts of Naibe had hurt her. She continued:
“We searched for you and found no one here but Count Hordjedtef’s wicked servants and word of a woman with them who took away his hounds.”
“She’s…” he tried again, confused. Too many thoughts swarmed through his soul. None of them seemed right. He felt as if every scrap of his intelligence and wit had been like a jar lifted and shattered. As if he would have no further chance to sort this, he envisioned himself picking up pieces of truth scattered before him. “Where is Hor…”
“Gone. Also gone,” Khentie whispered tenderly. He noticed she was cuddling and gripping him as if she thought he might fail in her arms.
“He. Gave me Sweet… H…” he tried, but his strength was gone. He relaxed and curled up close to her, letting her hold him. After resting there for a moment, he continued. “Gone?” he frowned, filled with still more confusion. “Gone?”
“Where?” he tried again, remembering that some people had checked him and then implied something terrible had happened to him. Wserkaf sat, then shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Hord… jed… tef… boxes?”
Words sounded in the distance, but then grew near. A man, the king, said: “We found those and all the things that were inside, by the back gate.”
“Majesty…” he tried as Shepseskaf rounded the sesen pool to stand by the place where Khentie and he sat. “Why there?” Wse squinted.
“Our sister wondered that you had not come and sent a runner, but once whoever was here let him in they cut his throat. Then, the gods smote both men and burnt them to the bone. It’s what we found; three bodies, when we came to see for ourselves.”
The titter of low seductive laughter filled Wserkaf’s thoughts. He shook his head and took a gasping breath, then rubbed his eyes.
“What is it?” Khentie asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Laughing… Great One not here?” Wse asked, confused again. “He is laughing,” He protested because although the laugh he heard was disembodied, he had heard it before. Sometimes I hear you laugh Great One. Certainly…
Something moved by his foot in the water. He stared at a suspicious swirl among the shrouding wide green leaves with submerged pink and white heads.
“Khentie…” he started, then nudged something solid with his foot. In the ambient torchlight, he thought he saw something grey and wiry breaking the surface of the water. He scrambled back from the edge of the pool, yanking his feet out of the water. “There. In the water,” he groaned as another wave of confusion swept through him.
Khentie gasped, pulling her legs up.
Shepseskaf bent to look, then straightened and called.
“A light… over here… and a staff.”
Torchlight filled the area where Wse, Khentie, and the king stood. Bunefer, Khenunu’s parents, and Khenunu moved closer, but Kakai urged them not to look.
“Is it him?” Khentie asked as one of the guards extended a staff, struck a wadded bunch of fabric, and drew the mass forward. It rolled slightly and revealed the elder prince’s face, pale and starting to plump from the soaking in the water.
“Well,” Shepseskaf paused, at a momentary loss for something to say. “That explains why we couldn’t find him,” he shook his head.
“Dead?” Wserkaf struggled to his feet, then stumbled and almost fell into the water with his former teacher. His thoughts rioted. “How…” he stared at the floating face and saw clouded white eyes and an open, constricted jaw that gave the appearance that something had been stuffed in his gaping mouth. It made him look like he was crying out. Wserkaf felt Khentie look away and begin to murmur prayers.
Was it his heart? A stroke? Or… his thoughts raced.
For the briefest of moments, Wserkaf remembered a spiritual assault that had come the day before Marai the sojourner had come into the old man’s life. Marai had attacked one of the acolytes with a gust of wind that made the boy slip and fall into the pond. The boy had become unnaturally tangled in the roots of the sesen and had been about to drown until Wserkaf dove in to save him. He too had become entangled. But Marai did not do this. He had no reason to do this, unless...
Kakai ushered his mother away from the pool while Wse stayed to stare and ponder as the men murmured in superstition about evil eyes and that no one should look in the old man’s dead eyes or they would catch the death.
Naibe, he thought. She said in my dream that he was gone, that he wouldn’t hurt me anymore. Then he overheard Bunefer asking someone a question and snapped his head to look.
“Where did you find this, child?”
Khenunu. She has something… he thought.
“By the little cane bed,” The girl answered. “This shawl. Whose is it?”
Wserkaf struggled to make out the cloth she held up to the prophetess for inspection. In the young girl’s hands was a finely woven long shawl of whitest linen.
“This belonged to the Shinar dancer. I remember her sewing the little flowers and bulls on it. How is it…” Bunefer began but stopped as if she realized she was saying something impossible.
“That…” Khentie’s voice started, then caught. “Can’t…be…”
Wserkaf staggered back, feeling the full effect of the last bit of the drug descend on him in the form of a massive dizzy spell. The look in the old man’s dead eyes riveted him; the aura of the ibis never plainer.
Dead bird, he thought, then:
Look at me, Wse. Look what she did to me. A shriek of a water bird followed by tinny cackling arose from the water. Wserkaf almost thought he heard the old man’s strangled voice begging for pity and perhaps mercy, but knew his thoughts were merely playing games. He remembered he had called to Naibe when he thought he couldn’t reach Khentie. Somehow, she had come to save him.
Naibe, he felt himself crumpling but suddenly caught in Shepseskaf’s arms.
“Here… get over here,” the king snapped to some of his men. “You two, get His Highness away from the water before he falls in and drowns too.”
Wserkaf felt himself being guided to the cane bed where he had spent helpless hours, hearing Shepseskaf say:
“There’s a lot of death in this house. We need to get this place put to a torch and then have ours
elves cleansed. All of us. There’s a curse playing out right as we stand here… a big one.”
“Majesty, should we…?” one of the men ventured but didn’t complete the question.
Shepseskaf understood and glanced at his dead uncle one more time, then turned away from the pond. Do they really have to ask that? he shook his head and sighed distastefully. “Yes, fish him out of there.”
Epilogue: On the Scales
Maatkare had been standing most of the evening on the shore, sullen after he had released Deka to the boat with her lion guards. Marai had gone his way already, and the sun was sinking over the horizon.
This is not a defeat, he mused; it’s a strategic step back for an ultimate win while I study all the events. He shook his head, then patted it, marveling at the way it grew full and thick as any wig, despite barbering. His forefinger gently stroked the place where his green stone lay. I’ll keep the woman for now, but had it not been for the neter she gave and the thrill of hunting at her side… the powers, I would have destroyed her. The sojourner and the others? That’s later, same with the Akaru and his folk. Ineb Hedj? I have a funeral I mustn’t miss, though I know loose lips will set trouble for me in motion unless I can get Dede to work his magic and lull them. Perhaps the woman and I should handle this and somehow thwart the return until I have all the neter stones returned. Too much to think about.
He noticed a tall, slim man moving up the bank of the river toward him and instantly tensed. Now who’s this? Said I wanted no attendants, his fingers wrapped the hilt of his dagger.
His men knew by watching him kick and throw things when he first entered the camp that he was in a grim mood and wanted to walk off any anger. He wished for one moment that he could have been as free as the woman or her guards and gone on a “run” as a wolf until his rage was spent. Instead, he decided to stay on the hillock in the wild area outside Buhen before someone got hurt. He had placed all the patrol leaders on the preparation duties.
My men know me enough to stop anyone from coming to me, especially a stranger. Someone will get a flogging. He considered Deka on the boat, waiting for him to calm himself. I’ll go to her once her lion guards sleep and see about her. I have an itch that needs scratching.
The strange man continued to advance through the twilight.
“Who comes to me? You there! Answer,” he took a step forward, showing his weapon.
“Your Highness,” the man answered with a courteous and disarming smirk, followed by a crisp bow. “I was instructed to seek you. I thought I might find you here.”
“I doubt that. No one of mine would so dare. I don’t recognize you. Step forward or find this knife in your throat,” he ordered. “My men know I am to be alone.”
He paused in horror the instant his last word left his lips. As he stood facing the stranger, he felt his own face and body melting and reforming into something with the body of a man, but the head of a wolf-dog – his favored illusion of Wepwawet.
“What are…” he stepped back, blinking and astonished. His stone had leapt into prominence as his humanity shifted. “You stop this!” he growled and began to snap and slaver, then noticed he suddenly brandished a kopesh blade of finest bronze in each hand. You will not control me! Let me cut you… Maatkare leapt, more wolf-like than human and slashed at the image but missed.
Right through the demon bastard. Then he cried aloud: “Een Tjoad Nau Alayna…”
The man smirked, amused, and then lifted his hand to display the black leather nau stone and wrist brace he wore. Before Maatkare could acknowledge what he had seen, a dark spark snapped his glance away. He couldn’t look at the hand-piece without instantly folding in nauseating pain.
“Boy… not used to getting turned around, are you?” the tall man stepped into the rising moonlight and stood before him; arms folded.
“Who?” the prince scrambled, snarling angrily and positioning himself to jump at the mysterious figure again. Then it dawned on him:
“That’s a nau piece like one I used to wear. Has power over the neter stones,” he gasped, hardening his senses against the pain. “Stop working me,” he hissed. Slowly, the pain decreased and his eyes cleared enough for him to stare at the man “I do know your face after all.”
“Yes, you do,” the man affirmed, “and I have known you since the hour of your birth.”
“Grandfather. Again, you visit and nag me from your dream space. Now you come as a young man. Why? Have you nothing better to do?”
“I have a just reason to be here and you, I believe, owe me much of your time to hear me,” the image of young Prince Hordjedtef solidified. Then, as if on impulse, the hand that bore the image of the nau strap reached forward to touch Maatkare’s gleaming and emerged green stone.
“Well done,” Hordjedtef moved backward as if delighted and disgusted at the same time, “and not entirely unexpected.” The image of the youthful prince began to shimmer and flicker back and forth between the form of the old man which Maatkare recognized, the youthful prince holding a goose with a red ribbon around its neck, and something else Maatkare couldn’t bring himself to think about or remember. Each time the prince blinked or looked away from the growing and sickening energy emanated by the nau, the shape of the old man showed a third image. It was red, or was surrounded by red and black, with serpent-like affects or leathery wings and claws. Each time the image of his grandfather shifted, that image was there in a layer underneath what he saw or allowed himself to see.
Red fiends… Maatkare thought on a passage from the chants spoken to the dead. But why…
“What are you? You are not Hordjedtef,” Maatkare demanded, mustering a brave exterior betrayed only by a twitch in the corner of his widened mouth.
He had expected his own image revert to human form as the shape of Hordjedtef resumed its elderly look, but instead he saw his wolf-dog form become even more defined and regal. The Wepwawet shape continued its transformation into Anpu, Lord of the Dead and of the Resurrection.
Maatkare grunted in protest and tried to shake off the influence of the spell, but realized he had been swept into another reality. The area where he had been standing had changed from the shore of the great Asar River, and the figure before him was no longer a cocky young version of his grandfather.
He, as a form of the Hunter and the Lord of Death regarded a shivering, bitter, and wet image of an old man. Both of his own claw-like hands reached forward. A look of horror spread over the image huddled before him. Everything around them was grey: sky, ground, everything. The thinnest sliver of rose color cracked at what should have been a horizon. Maatkare’s own shape had become magnificent. It glittered in gold, crystal and star-filled armor, but his own voice repeated his drunken rant to Ariennu the night of his Sending Forth party in Ineb Hedj.
Aaoohhh! I’m the Lord of the Dead, by the Blood of Aset, Lord of the Dead… he heard himself scream and dimly recalled Ariennu, also quite drunk, trying to shut him up. It was an excellent memory most of the time. Now, it horrified him.
“What is going…?” Maatkare started, his head snapping around once more to see the rose-colored horizon opening like a crack between two worlds. The upper and the lower portions spun counter to each other as the crack advanced toward him and the image of his grandfather. The motion powered the opening. Brilliant sunlight issued through the rift, and beyond that the prince sensed many shadows of all shapes and sizes gathered in a crowd but contained behind a barrier in the shape of a giant scale.
“I came to you because you know me, and know my motive was pure,” the old man’s form began to blink in and out of reality.
“Dead? You’re dead?” Maatkare felt his mouth open and close, a dog whimper of misery issuing from him. “Then what am…” the young general growled softly, accepting that he had mysteriously assumed the god-role he’d been trained to chant as a priest who would in heavy mask and costume perform the ceremonies of burial. In this training, he had shifted to alarm his priestly teachers instead of w
earing the mask and headgear, but they had been neither impressed nor amused.
Some do, they had warned like scolding women, but know masks that show the true nature are not so easily removed.
So now the image is fixed on me? We’ll see!
My moment is in your bodies,
A tinny and low voice growled from a spot above Maatkare’s left ear.
I assume you as the goddess requested.
Perform the task.
Judge him.
The words were paraphrased from the Book of the Dead – The Going Forth. Maatkare had spoken them in ritual so often he thought they might be etched on his heart. Now, a pitiful old man begged his acts in life would be interpreted correctly.
“If you do not help me, I will be cast into the eternal river and devoured to begin again. I’m tired. I don’t want to come back. I have been to the pinnacle and all else would be a failing. Young Raem, hear my confession. Know I have never done a wicked or wasteful thing; or one that had no benefit. I wanted the best for this land through right rule, adherence to Ma-at, protection of truth. I wanted to rule to make certain it would ever be law.
But my forms are in my place of habitation,
A dark voice followed Hordjedtef’s confession, guiding the general.
Maatkare stood speechless in his sudden dream, then asked: “How is it death came to you? Old age?”
The image of Hordjedtef paused. Though Maatkare had said it before, hearing it this time stunned the Great One, as if hearing it verified what he had suspected.
“I cannot be dead. It was promised to me that I would rule. Great Djehuti. Great Ptah-Tenen-Re-Amun. I have not failed you. Why did you allow this when you had given me chances to make it right?”
Him? Rule? I thought I was to… Maatkare shook his glittering head. “So, I see it was true. It never was intended for me to take the crown. I was to sit the throne until the sojourner brought the neters to Ineb Hedj and then you, made immortal, could cause my death and as a god hold high the double crown for your own victorious head? Now you expect me to spin the truth as you did for me when Meryt died? I now see your motive was not to prove my innocence, but to keep me alive and un-banished so you might still employ my talents. Right?” Maatkare felt his image of the wolf shift into crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion; as if he had become Hordjedtef’s personal Ammit of damnation.
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