“You dare touch my Savta Oora!”
“I...nothing...!” Marai felt the blood draining from his face, in absolute, unnerved shock. Savta...grandmother?...He knew in a flash that the young man was Houra’s grandson, but considering the age difference probably her great-grandson. He was darker skinned than regular Akkad folk, but had a strange bright goldish cast over his dark hair. The look on his face was pure Sheb, but softened by Houra’s pretty eyes.
Wait, there is time. This one does not ascend.
Whispers bounced between Marai’s brow and his breaking heart.
All sales at the pitiful booth stopped. Other family members closed in on the old woman, the young man and the big stranger as Marai realized the enormity of his discovery. The young man was the absent husband and crew laborer. Houra, perhaps also going deaf, must have been living in the worker’s village despite the noise. She had heard of the birth of her great-grandchild’s baby when Etum Addi’s son Ninka came to the camp. She had begged to come across the river to see it. Once here, her health had begun to fail, which caused the man to miss the crossing boat that morning. He had stayed to help at the booth and to protect the ailing matriarch as well as to care for his other children while his wife “Raawa” recovered from her unusually difficult birth.
No, no, no... Marai protested against the voices himself, understanding they were urging him to somehow stop her death She’s dying...It’s not right...she can’t! He squatted down to the level of the gathering family and reached through the throng to touch the woman’s cheek.
“You touch her...” The young man swiped at the big man’s hand.
Is there still a way? Marai hoped. The old woman’s barely breathed. All that had animated her was fading. Her skin felt like warm, fragile parchment.
There...he sighed internally.
Her sightless eyes opened just a little.
“Oh please come back, my Houra. Just for a little while.... Don’t make me seem like your murderer!” He let that thought flow through his fingertips to her brow, only to realize he was actually speaking aloud and just above a whisper. The swirl of light that was winging away, paused, as if reflecting for a moment and considering.
Oh I see...Oh beautiful! How the light is shining on our bluest hills...the turquoise/copper sands...I have to go... She was pulling away.
Marai knew she was seeing her pathway into Paradise.
The young man’s gaze turned in horror, too astonished for rage. He had no idea what kind of sorcery the mysterious giant before him was attempting, but he was certain it had to be evil. His life had been so hard that precious little frightened him but this “heka” the man was most certainly using had a different feel to it. A strange terror crept through his soul.
“Your words...” He spoke in a halting variant of Marai’s native language “What-is-the-land-made-you?”
Kina-ahnkt was the basic language used by the tribes of Sin-Ai, but the brogue varied depending on whichever race of people had been living on the land. Only people of the Copper Road spoke or understood all of that tongue. Marai had normally avoided lapsing into it in favor of pure Kina-ahnkt or Kemet speech so that he wouldn’t be judged an ill bred sojourner.
“I am of the sand, blue with turquoise, below the Mount of Sin, where the copper is...” Marai confessed in a whisper, returning his thoughts to his sister.
Come back if you can, I’ ll smooth the path... He pulled Houra up partway, holding her in his arms once again. Shoving the young man aside, he pushed the stonecutter so forcibly that the young man stumbled, skidded and fell into the baskets. Placing his fingertips at Houra’s breastbone, Marai shut his eyes and sighed. The old woman’s body leapt as suddenly as if the sojourner had struck her. A hideous, laughing grin distorted her sagging features. She gasped for breath then seemed to melt, as if Marai’s touch had stirred a long dead, and quite forbidden, joy.
“Demon...?” The young man struggled to get up without ruining the weave on the pile of baskets. “You get away from her!!” he grabbed at Marai’s arm again, humiliated at his lack of superior strength, but found himself deftly, and single-handedly, swatted away one more time.
Marai gathered the old woman up in his arms tenderly, as if he was afraid of waking her from her sleep. He knew an even greater crowd was gathering. Dozens of hands, having heard the young man say the word “demon” fumbled with evil eye charms and murmured about the distressful happenings further out. Marai knew a riot born of fear might erupt if he didn’t soon explain himself.
“No...I…I’m not a demon.” He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, impulsively kissing the old woman’s face “See? She’s just waking up...” Marai sighed in relief “Oh Goddess, she knows me...” He wasn’t even sure what he had done, but now... He stretched himself to full height, knowing whatever the Children had inspired him to do with that touch had brought her back from death. Looking back at the horrified crowd once, he announced:
“She has to get out of the sun!”
Houra briefly opened her nearly sightless eyes as if she hoped to see the face that belonged to the old familiar voice. She relaxed, hoisted bodily and almost snuggling her half-brother.
The young man followed him like some vicious cur, poking at his arm and yammering for him to put his Savta down as both men made their way deeper into the tent home. Raawa, who had been nursing her baby just inside the shade of the central flap, scrambled with him, chiding the onlookers like a shrieking rat. Another woman inside the dwelling showed the two men a musty-smelling pallet in the back. Marai set old Houra down on the only kind of bed she had ever known and stared quietly at her. He remembered everything in their days of growing up and falling in love, then contemplated how her entire life had passed while he spent two different nights in a strange boat of stellar light.
“You dare to come into my house!” the younger basket maker jabbed at Marai’s arm again, spoiling for a fight “You nearly scared her to death. Leave us...leave!” He kept trying to insert himself between Marai and the old woman, though he seemed so much smaller than the big man.
“Not too much cover...” Marai ordered some faceless hands who were busying themselves with the tent flap. “You’ll need to pull that wall on the left so I can see...” Marai recognized Sheb’s scowl again etched in the younger man’s seething face and steadfastly tried to ignore it. One of the heretofore-useless children scurried about the task of fetching some nasty water from a trough meant for animals.
“Would you let me be...” Marai protested. “Now...I’ve done some healing work! Let me fix what I’ve unsettled.” He bent down to the old woman and caressed her face as tenderly as if he were her lover.
She spoke in a strained whisper, too weak to be heard by anyone other than Marai and the basket maker.
“Oh, Djerah ...Look...It’s my Marai! He’s come...Why? Why so long...?” A tear oozed from her eyes. Somehow Marai’s entire world faded into that moment. They were alone again at home. She was begging him to take her away again so that she wouldn’t have to marry Sheb, even if being with her brother was wrong.
“Rest, sweet little Houra...” Marai’s own bitterness caught in his throat. “You’ve got a long journey ahead...to our Paradise beyond the Mountain...” Thunder rolled in his head and he wanted to weep even though he was still so very happy at that moment. “Look there! You see our Sheb. He’s there. He understands all that ever was between us now...” He stroked her pale brow. “It won’t be so bad. Go to him. But you must be ready.” He kissed her knobby hand, watching her sightless eyes shine once again.
I always loved you... Her thoughts rang in the silent language they employed when they were both young. She knew what he looked like now and was more than glad. Loving you...Not such a hard thing to do... Her eyes shut and turned inward.
I know, beloved one, I know... His thoughts replied.
“Enough of this!” The young man fully seized Marai by the shoulder, attempting once more to wrest him from the dying woman. A g
irl screamed as a reed cutter flashed skillfully in his hand and plunged downward.
Marai couldn’t take his eyes off of his sister. His hand, or the snap of a shadow hand, seized the basket maker’s wrist, pressing it until the knife fell to the floor of the tent.
An ibis head carved of highly polished ebony wood slipped down between the two men.
“Touching...” A strange, almost floating voice spoke in broken Kina-Ahnkt. “You return the dead to life and cast out the demon?” All eyes snapped to regard a man of Kemet holding the other end of the walking stick. Although the staff, on quick glance, resembled an official was scepter, it had no forked foot. The head of the staff was clearly an ibis, rather than the strange bird-animal usually seen on the upper end of such sticks.
No one had heard the bearer of this staff approach. He was suddenly just there. A dark indigo-dyed cloak, flashing with the deep purple color of good amethyst, billowed back with a slim man’s graceful arm movements. The gesture revealed a long, white, shendyt-like garment, that brushed just below the knee. On his feet were expensive gold-beaded, pale, kid sandals. The leather belt that clasped the garment to the body of its owner was fitted with gold and blue-inlaid tiles. His head, seen only in the bounce of light from outside the tent was immaculately tonsured from his brow to the upper back of his head. Instead of the usual headgear or wig to protect it from the near-noon sun, the man shaded it with the hooded cowl of his dark robe. His face seemed almost chubby and soft-cheeked like a woman’s face, but the hint of a mustache decorated his lip. The smoothness of face didn’t match his slim, mid-brown, but excellently proportioned athletic body at all.
A Djehuti Priest...The woman’s relatives whispered among themselves. Such high-ranking men, especially full priests as this one appeared to be, were seldom seen on this side of the great Asar. If they were seen, they were never without a retinue of servants. A general from the King’s army would have been more apt to wander among the stalls than a priest of this stature.
Marai’s heart leapt and his blood chilled. His hair wanted to stand on end, but he quickly checked his thoughts, knowing he’d already been too open with them. He didn’t even want to think about how long this ‘priest of the intelligences’ had been standing near the humble tent, reading him, before he decided to enter.
“Wasn’t a demon, Lord.” Marai spoke perfectly in the priest’s language. “I came upon her, sick like this...I only tried to ease her pain.”
The basket maker’s family moved toward Marai and old Houra in sudden silent support, disquieted that such a high-ranking priest, quite obviously one of the “five”, had sneaked out of his temple, across the river and into their tent, undetected.
Marai showed him that Houra was sleeping peacefully.
“This ‘easing of pain’,” The priest parried “Just where did you learn to do such a thing?” He withdrew his staff in a quick semi-twirl, then planted it in the earthen floor and gently leaned on it in an attitude of curiosity. After a moment of watchful silence the priest waved the basket maker, who was nursing his sore wrist, aside so he could examine the woman himself. His skillful hands gestured quickly at her temples.
The woman is dying. Marai felt the priest’s voice in his own thoughts. And yet...she does not suffer, or have fear as a commoner who knows naught of the next world should.
Only humble obedience came from the crowd. One did not argue with priests, especially one who appeared as wealthy or powerful as this one. This kind of man could easily levy untold misery, if not death, if he was irritated.
“I picked it up...In my travels.” Marai’s eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed as he obscured every thought of his past and his relation to the people here. He fully understood that this meeting was far from a chance encounter. He knew exactly why this priest had come.
“Oh? Did you?” The priest mused, raising a forefinger to his right eye. The gesture let Marai know at once that the priest had felt the probe of his thoughts and wasn’t going to put up with much of it. “You clothe yourself strangely well...” The priest continued “...and speak the Kings tongue to me as if born in one of the high houses, yet you appear to know years in the SinA, with your woolen walking cloak and body-covering shirt. Have you business with He who Rules the Two Lands?” His well-trained voice shaped his words as well as his character with educated, but artificial precision.
“Check your records, Lord” Marai ventured after a stiff bit of silence. “I’ve been drawn here for study yet, I’m learning it is an irregular thing for a sojourner such as myself, so I await invitation. Meanwhile, I work here selling cedar spice with Etum-Addi the Sangir.” Marai sensed the young sesh who had told him he was fifty years late in meeting with Djedi was the link who had brought the priest to this side of the river, even though months had passed since that time. He knew the wise men of Kemet were so enamored of record keeping that the priest standing beside him would have learned of his being here fairly quickly if he learned it at all. The curious part was why it had taken so long for him to hear from this or any other priest.
The priests’ craft shone coldly in his painted eyes, mirroring his deeply perceptive truth and intellect. He knew exactly what information he was allowing Marai to sense from him.
“I think you knew of me some months ago.” Marai continued, suddenly uncomfortable about parrying with a strange priest in front of long lost relatives who didn’t even know him. Even if Houra’s descendants were born and bred here, there was enough of the wilderness left in them to foster little respect for priests and those perceived as wizards. He sensed them growing even more uneasy with each word he and the priest exchanged.
“And this with the old woman?” The priest asked, still trying to tease an answer out of the big man. “Do you flaunt your art, without our license, to any you feel are in need of your talents?” he asked.
One of the women pushed a little jar of beer at the priest.
He drank it graciously, his stern countenance breaking into a practiced and stiff little grin. It was at once as false and polite as it needed to be. With another gesture, he muttered the necessary phrases of a basic house blessing and returned his attentions to Marai, who continued:
“This woman was going into her death! I had just realized we were of the same people. I wanted to do something.” The sojourner glanced at the faces of Raawa’s family who had gathered around them, peering intently. He sensed the statement of his being related wasn’t being taken quietly.
“Lo? Related, is it?” The priest’s lower lip jutted as he sensed the instant discord in the air. “You know these people?”
“I know the woman.” The big man began but corrected himself. “I know of the woman. She’s my...father’s sister….my A’ma Houra…” He adjusted their relationship to avoid shocking the basket makers into calling him a liar in front of the priest. Rising to his feet, after one more glance at sleeping Houra, Marai looked down at the priest, then past him to the young man who still rubbed his wrist. The latter’s face drifted between enraged shock and disbelief.
“She was the wife of Sheb, the son of Ebach who was brother of Ahu, her father and my grandfather.” Marai explained
The young man’s jaw dropped. He knew no one in Kemet but a relative could have known his family lineage so well and he certainly did not know this man. He had heard there was a giant man with funny-looking silver and gold tassel-hair who had women living with him who were supposed to be wives. That was so unbelievable he had wanted to look. He’d seen Marai in the distance during the start of the flood season this year, but then he had taken his ailing grandmother across the river to stay in the worker’s village and had never found the chance to meet the big man. His wife and her family had decided to stay on the East side because it was quieter. The young man had only met this merchant Etum Addi when he came to see his wife and baby last night.
Savta Oora had always prattled a fantastic tale of her older half-brother who sang love songs to the goddess Ashera for fifteen ye
ars to atone for the death of his wife. He knew that particular goddess was similar to HetHrt, the gentle cow-faced mother always represented by the wife of the king and by most of the princesses, but this Ashera his grandmother spoke of seemed to have a much harsher and punishing side.
Djerah remembered too well his grandmother’s tale of the night before they were betrayed. She told anyone who would listen, from childhood on, that the goddess had scooped her brother Marai up out of the wastes to be her beloved. Only, she never brought him back. Old Sheb, whom he had never known, had blamed their troubles on this man’s disappearance, Savta Oora had said, and tried to forbid her to speak his name, but she had never obeyed him.
Now that she was old, she would sometimes weep for no reason. Her thoughts were like a child’s these past few months. The basketmaker, who hired out as a stonecutter, frequently heard her speaking the old language, and sometimes she would call him as if he were her long dead Sheb. Just now she had called this stranger “Marai”, which had been the name of her own missing brother! It was the softening of her thoughts because she was old...the madness of age to call a living person the name of a dead one. The big man certainly didn’t look like a relative, however distant. His smooth hair shone like silver and gold and he was almost as hairless as a Kemet noble given to the habit of shaving...not at all like the black and wiry-headed, hairy men of his family.
“But that would make you the son of one called Marai-who-walked-with-She?” the young stonecutter mouthed, incredulous. Are you son of his goddess?” The man almost mocked, wondering if the “goddess” had been some pale-haired freak of a woman from the inner Northlands beyond the Kina. He had never seen one, but he had heard stories of their pink color and soft-flax yellow hair.
“I am his son, but ...” Marai didn’t want to lie again. Ariennu was absolutely right. He was terrible at it and apt to be quickly found out. For now, he had no choice. The priest stood nearby, taking in everything the men said to each other, but quite accurately reading the sweat of lies on the sojourner’s neck.
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