Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  “Oh...” Marai grinned, relaxing a little more.

  The two dogs leapt free of the servant and skittered toward the big man.

  Hordjedtef made a slightly wry face at their behavior.

  “Odd...” The Great One mused “They don’t usually come to guests without teeth bared...” He paused, letting the animals scamper around him a little. He petted them, let them butt him affectionately and lick his ancient face.

  Anyone who likes animals can’t be all bad. Marai felt a little more at ease.

  The dogs turned, sauntered and began to give Marai a similar greeting. He’d never owned a pet. His herd wasn’t so huge that he needed a herding animal. He tensed, partly startled and partly in delight as the two began to yip, sniff and make little “iwiw” warbles in welcome.

  “But they like you...” the old man mused. “It seems you have a way of putting beasts at ease. Is that another secret skill of yours?” he called his servant over to get them.

  “Hetep... Rawser... Go on boys … Father is busy...” he cautioned the animals.

  “Both male, I see...” Marai straightened up as the dogs were led to the back yards of the estate home. The names of the dogs were odd, too. They weren’t nicknames, or names that spoke of their traits. The dogs had been named for particular humans for some unknown reason. perhaps it had beden a mild insult of some kiind...two people who had offended him, perhaps.

  “When I was younger and inclined to go on hunts I had several more, both male and female, but these boys are the only ones left. I won’t have a breeding bitch in here to fill up the yard with her pups... It became too much for the countesses and me. These ones, comfort an old man.” Hordjedtef sighed, realizing the dogs had taken both of them badly off topic. “You were going to tell me of what gods or goddesses you honored.”

  “We traveled.” Marai began again, craning his glance a little to see where the dogs were being taken. “In every land we learned stories of the great ones. When life is hard, one has little time for regular devotion unless a curse must be lifted...then we pray and make sacrifice for relief of it.” he stated.

  Actually, the opposite was true most of the time. People without hope or without means, usually prayed to many deities and spirits. His father and Sheb had done that to a limited extent, but they had been pragmatic. If a god didn’t respond in a hurry with the needed miracle, one simply abandoned that god or goddess and found another. By the time he was elderly, Marai’s father worshipped the goods he had, praising his own hard work rather than the blessing of some unseen being...“My Abu, Ahu preferred El or the great god of the moon, Sin when he was young. The women in my family mostly sang praises to Kotharat when a birth time approached. Mostly we spoke to the spirits of those who have gone before.”

  “Singing...I remember the sound of singing from long ago...” The elder quietly regarded his new student, fascinated. “Would you do it now for me, so I can be certain of you?”

  Marai fell silent, suddenly at a loss for words. His own chosen goddess represented love, sensuality and fertility, but she was also symbol of war, vengeance and jealousy, and according to most, wisdom too. He smirked at his own lack of sight, inwardly, but protected that thought. Sheb had been correct. His goddess was more like Inanna than Ashera, or Athirat. The women who came out of the wilderness with him were all Ashera and Inanna combined and then divided by three. Each featured a different aspect: Naibe’s sensuality, Ariennu’s wisdom, and even Deka’s dark, warlike bitterness were part of the same whole goddess–a triple goddess.

  He thought of Naibe for a moment. The women would have had a fairly successful morning. Perhaps they would be resting in the heat of the day with the awning drawn over their pretty faces and their wares.

  Naibe-Ellit, beloved... his thoughts whispered. I didn’t mean to leave you without a goodbye. I just couldn’t see your face and still have the power left in my legs to go. He sent that thought, in case she sensed his song and started to cry.

  “Bless me with your smile, woman

  Your gentle touch and understanding in

  Our sweet bedroom in the night...”

  The sojourner’s voice became sadder at the end of the phrases he gently sang.

  Something in the priest’s eyes glimmered in distant recognition, as if the pleasure and pain of hearing his guest’s voice had become combined into one thing.

  Marai stopped singing. In the distance, in the private part of the high priest’s city home, he heard a woman’s voice whispering. Was it a servant or was it one of the wives? Before he spent too much time thinking about it, the elder cleared his throat again, shifting to a question about the four elements.

  At first Marai thought the old man was getting tired and scattered, but then he understood Hordjedtef’s masterful technique. The rapid-fire changing of the subject matter and the area of questioning was specifically designed to confuse the student and get at a deeper answer. He asked Marai to explain these elements and to give examples of them as well as how all matter moved through their energy and assumed their form. He asked Marai to demonstrate how one measures each element.

  “Water: It’s depth in a vessel, it’s force.” Marai answsered, finding that part easy. “Air, again it’s force, how great something can be blown up that contains it, that no living thing survives without it. The bubbles here, for instance.” He paused, quaffing some frothy beer as the attending students set it out.

  Some of them paused, wanting to sit and listen, amazed at the clarity of the strange man’s answers.

  The elder prince let them stay a while, then shooed them off to daily acts of servitude in the enclosed garden and among the few fruit trees.

  “Earth...it’s solidity like a rock...and soft as mud or sand each measured, by the spade and a vessel of known quantity with markings...And fire...measured by the color, the heat, the time takes to consume something it burns, or fade when spent.” he continued.

  The elder nodded, often distracted with other thoughts about the sojourner and his skill, almost struggled to pose new questions.

  The rest of the afternoon dealt with concepts of structure and balance in the universe.

  The dialogue shifted. The priest and his new student discussed the heavens. They spoke of how the earth was almost round, like an egg and of how that was the usual shape of the other bodies he could see in the night sky. He learned from his teacher that all of the great Houses of Eternity from which the kings ascended were built on calculated portions of Earth measurement. These measurements formed shapes when they were inscribed in repeating circles, triangles, and squares. The structures and the orientation of the sacred temples had been handed down before the darkness, when the world of the ancients had faced destruction by these four elements, and the gods had returned to the sky.

  The kings built their Eternal houses of earth stone to salute the sun which gave life and the wind which gave breath. They built them tall with golden caps to salute and attract fire from the stormy sky. Rising from the womb seed of earth and nourished by her waters, the houses of the new gods would mirror the work of those above as they looked down on their descendants, from the night sky. His own pathway to the stars was completed by each king, to speed the journey home to the gods. By day it was a figure of the ray of the life-giving sun streaming down in love and creating a way for the gods to speak to those chosen few whom they had given the right to rule.

  Marai listened and learned at a stunning rate. He was being “unlocked” almost faster than he was being taught. He learned as if the knowledge had always been present in him. Very soon, the format of the “lesson” changed into one of intellectual dialog.

  Hordjedtef simply repeated a word or stated a concept. The men would reflect, and then Marai would speak, relating whatever had come forth in his thoughts. This was less wearing on his teacher, who now sat, merely recording anything unusual his “initiate” might say. Marai never tired at all.

  He was shown how to create designs using these shapes a
nd soon stunned the elder with flawless and intricate patterns of aching beauty. At times the Marai laughed aloud at certain revelations. Just as quickly, tears would fill his eyes and course down his cheeks. Most of the time he would sit trembling in ecstasy and he listened, then gasp almost breathlessly as he began to recite. So much of everything he heard made perfect sense now. Vague things floating in his dream world or imagination suddenly became linked.

  At first, Marai assumed the feeling of wisdom and graceful power came from the child stone in his head. He felt it pulsing faintly from time to time as if it, too, were learning from the given lesson. At certain points he became lost in his own thoughts. Even lost, he was still able to absorb this “Wisdom of Djehuti”. He felt great and small at the same time and would have become entirely lost in that other-worldly feeling, possibly floating into the air above the villa, if the child stone had not pulled his thoughts back into focus from time to time.

  After the second lighter meal of soups and breads was served in the evening, Hordjedtef abruptly stopped the dialog for the day. He stood without much more than a nod at his new student, then left the open plaza to join his countesses in their quarters. There they would enjoy a light dessert and some of the younger wife’s soothing music.

  Two new priests in the healing arts arrived to observe him and to inspect Marai’s general health. The men discussed the moon-like color of his hair, discussing how odd it looked when balanced against the color of new copper. The following day, they told him, they would expect to see how he might compete physically.

  The small entourage drifted with him in tow to a private area in the back of the main building. A small cube-shaped room with a corridor to rooms on each side contained a deep pool. It reeked of moss, sweet herbs, incense and moisture. Marai was instructed by the men in the ritual cleanliness demanded of those who sought knowledge. They decided he would be allowed to keep his hair and beard at chin level only because there was no evidence of lice or scabbing. He would, they told him, need to thoroughly bathe twice daily and even after that he would not be allowed inside the temples until after his initiations. At that, the priests left him alone for the evening, retiring to the outer area without so much as ‘good night’.

  Servants lugged in steaming cauldrons of hot water, tipped them and poured the water into the pool and cast fragrant herbs on the water’s surface to freshen it. Then, they too, departed.

  Pools for bathing were not entirely common, Marai knew, but Hordjedtef was a high priest and a prince. Immersion bathing was important in the ritual cleanliness as well as in the promotion of health and spiritual well-being. The wealthiest of nobles had at least shallow pools other than reflection or garden pools in the home as well as private lakes kept free of crocodiles or snakes. The deep water reminded the elect that they were born “of the water” of the divine goddess. Although he hadn’t seen it, he had heard new royal children were placed into and then drawn from the water at the moment of their births. The water was warm, almost hot. Marai sensed that even though hot cauldrons of water were being put into the tub, there was a method of heating it from below.

  Before he undressed, Marai recalled the humbling feeling on the vessel when the Children of Stone asked him to strip off his filthy clothing. He remembered thinking they were watching him from somewhere in the fog. Tonight, he had the same feeling. Someone’s eyes were on him as he stood at the edge of the pool, but no one was there. Were there cracks in the wall through which the elder might watch him and possibly take his insidious delight? He quickly undressed and slipped into the edge of the warm, deep water.

  At once, as soon as he sagged down the side of the pool and the warm water closed around his shoulders, he felt transported to the wadi station pool so many years ago and so far away. The hot, quiet repose was a welcome thing after the weary day of ruminations and writings of cosmic theory. Marai’s thoughts rose from him like the steam that rose in the close little room. It faded into rapturous silence. In his vision, he saw the women were closing the shop for the day. He knew they had turned a good profit and were able to trade for plenty of cloth, thread, flour and other goods they needed for daily living.

  Etum Addi had given Marai’s portion of the day to young Raawa and the people in the lower apartment who had briefly come back to get travel supplies. He found them trying to trade enough to get the woman’s body back to the farm where they had labored most of their lives even though it made little sense to bury her there. It had taken everything they owned to get the basic resin laid on her body so the insects wouldn’t start on it for a day or two. Being able to bury her in the Ineb Hedj cemetery for the poor would help. The rest of Houra’s people, the remains of the proud clan envisioned by Ahu would come to work for the merchant and his family after a short mourning period and the payment of debt to the landowner where they farmed.

  Marai regretted that he couldn’t magically breathe upon the trade goods so they would become as gold.

  Houra deserves a monument as fine as one made for the wife of a god! he sighed to himnself. His spirit leapt to touch, caress and kiss each of the women, as they made their way up the steps to their apartment.

  Naibe-Ellit went to her knees, weak from the joy of his spirit surrounding her. She still looked a little tired from her encounter with the darkness that had come to them the day before, but in general good health.

  Oh my love...come home...please! Her heart cried out to him as Ariennu and Deka helped her up. The three women went into their apartment and sat by Deka’s window, holding each other, as Naibe pulled Marai’s thoughts from his day.

  Oh then, not so very bad, today...I should be safe here. The old man thinks it will be just a ten day and half until he can properly assess my skill. I’ ll come home then, we’ ll go on working and wait for the appointment by the king...He smiled from his place in the warm, deep water.

  Deka began singing that strange little chant again.

  Marai knew she was worried about him, because she was using the chant to mask her fear.

  Man-Sun is seeing and learning so much, now... She smiled, but the expression was only tentative. Deka embraced Naibe tightly; holding her up in sweet reassurance.

  An empathetic sigh escaped from one of the narrow, semi-sealed doorways into the pool area.

  Marai’s eyes blinked open. He tried to see the source of the noise through the steamy mist that was almost as thick as the fog on the Children’s vessel. The result wasn’t going to be the same, this time. In his reverie, he hadn’t noticed someone come and go on feather-light feet. He realized must have either dozed or fallen into a light trance. Marai startled slightly, because his heightened senses should have made it easier for him to be aware of any intruder. Whoever it was, had spread a thick linen mat on the tiles by this pool. A beaker of oil was placed beside it.

  In the steamy, cedar odor of the bathing room, he gradually picked out the shape of a man in the corner who was wearing a beaten metal mask that resembled the beaked god but that mask kept no secret. It was the younger inspector priest who had visited him the day before.

  You were glowing... reaching out to touch… ran the priest’s brief thought. Were you thinking of your women?

  What do you want? Marai w was too tired to speak aloud. He had been drifting as he sat in the pool even though his thoughts were racing from the sheer quantity of information he had received throughout the day.

  “I have been asked by my senior to continue your instruction in physical matters and in the healing zones this evening. The task is also mine to instruct you in movement in the morning.” The inspector’s long and slender hands removed the mask from his sober looking face. Setting it down in the corner of the clearing room, he sorted through the other oil and scents, then beckoned for Marai to get out of his bath.

  The sojourner still considered motioning for the priest to come closer so he could grab him and hold him underwater until the bubbles stopped, but he stilled himself. It would only be fair to hear the rest of th
e explanation of what the priest had originally intended to do during the enchantment he cast.

  As soon as the inspector smoothed out the towelling, Marai pushed up out of the pool, then lay face down on it. The servants who had brought in the water had returned to remove the fired clay dam in the side of the pool so that much of the water could be drained out into a drain channel exiting the building. They mopped the sides of the pool for a moment or two then left the room.

  Marai decided to play along for now, acting like a good, but simple student again. At once, however, he noticed that something was different about the inspector’s demeanor this evening. In the two days he had known him, Marai had seen this man’s character change from aloof to imperious to something akin to frightened yesterday evening. Now the man exhibited another layer of emotion...one of eerie reserve.

  “As I apply this oil, I will name healing points on the body. When I touch your body, understand no harm is intended...” the priest’s voice was light, but incredibly gentle as if he spoke from his own deep trance. When the man applied the warm honey scented oil, Marai felt waves of stillness spreading through his back and up into his neck.

  Different points were named. The gods and energies who governed these ‘Lotus points’ were named. The priest explained how the touching or massage of these places had the power to open them for god’s healing light to enter, so that the impurities trapped inside could be released and illnesses cured. The priest’s intent was to render him to jelly, locating any places where his energy was bound up, rather than to arouse him. He was as skilled in the art of massage as Ariennu ever was in physical seduction.

  Medical wisdom? Marai asked himself. A Heka Master, too? He had to admit he was impressed. If the man was a prince, he certainly was more in line to be some kind of high priest than eventual king. He didn’t seem to have a bit of the warrior blood in his veins–not even as much as old Hordjedtef in his dotage still exhibited. Everything about this man was calm in nature. It made his hand in the events of yesterday—the prank, even more ridiculous.