The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  Then the lord of killers emerged from among his men, towering, with massive shoulders, his war-helmet shining pyrite-yellow with its squared-off horns beneath the broken light of sunset.

  “You! Boy!” he yelled, his voice competing with the thunder, magnified by decades’ hate in heart and untold murders on his hands. “Sparrow-Prince!”

  His fools laughed loud enough that we could hear it full across to our side of the river.

  I stepped forward, bowmen at my sides, swordsmen beside them, hatcheters and pikesmen outward still.

  Behind me, and behind him, our armies shifted anxiously, awaiting order sending them to kill and die in agony.

  He shouted, “I knackered your father like an rabbit in a snare! Threw his meat and bones into the dirt like knots of shit!”

  His words: like burning winds against my eyes and in my nostrils.

  “I chased your bitch-mother out of her own country! Into exile with the forest-mountain savages of Rebarna! Where she fucked and sucked any man who promised her so much as a sharp stick to bring back here to fight me!”

  His hyenas, a pack of thousands, cackled a storm.

  “I skewered your idiot wizard like a campfire snack,” he howled, “and turned your children’s camp into a smoking yard of broken bones and bricks.

  “And you! I ripped you apart like a virgin-bride promised to a lonely elephant!”

  Those hyenas, gasping laughter across the river—I smelled the stench of it. Their master had to yell, even with his thunder-voice, above the din.

  “So I ask all your trained monkeys over there . . . . Who, among all the peoples of the Savage Lands or Blackland, could ever bow to him?

  “What kind of king could he ever be? A king of cripples? With their asses ripped open? You swarming rats have been nibbling my sandals for fifteen years, and for what? So you could all die here, today, drowned in this river?

  “So let me tell all of you over there who are about to die,” he said, sweeping his scimitar towards us, his arc of intended massacre, “I grant you one chance.

  “One chance for me to let you live as my slaves, instead of dying as my sacrifices with open skulls, and your hearts ripped from you and fed to our war-dogs.

  “Turn your Sparrow Prince over to me. Now. Or we will exterminate you.”

  In fifteen years of war, I’d heard fifteen thousand tales of battles, speeches hurled prior to mass-murder, inspiration-harbinger of expiration. I’d studied my Master’s Instructions, knew their wisdom-words that were undiminished in their strength from the First Verse of creation.

  But the only words I spoke were silent ones, words-of-power I had heard inside the sunrise.

  I hefted Ray before me, and marched upon the face of the River Eternal, and did not sink.

  And Set spoke thunder, and his flesh unfurled like a bolt of cloth, and his face became a serpent’s, and across the water he splashed, and we met at river’s centre, uncle and nephew, killers both, to decide the universe’s fate.

  We struggled, slashed and bit, strangled, gashed, transformed ourselves across a dozen bodies each, seeking butcher’s path to victory.

  Yet as the hours boiled and the sun fell behind the edge of the world, I could see no means to kill my way towards the Golden Fortress that my Master tasked me to create.

  The Destroyer was too battle-strengthened, too learnèd in the arts of death, too belly-forged for me to break his back or bind his limbs and hack them off.

  Unless I set a fire that burned the cosmos, I knew I could not defeat him.

  So in night’s clutches I retreated to an island in the river, and spoke a voice that could’ve rung from Ptah’s own anvil, while holding Ray above me yielding golden light so great the stars went dark.

  “I . . . surrender!”

  My legions raged, “No, Hru! No! No!”

  Shaking Ray to sky, I shouted at the waters, “I surrender, do you hear me?”

  My soldiers screamed. The Destroyer’s killers cheered.

  “It’s what you’ve waited all these years to hear me say, isn’t it? So why wait any longer?

  “I order you to come take me! I command you to meet me a final time!

  “Come, Grinder of Bones, Shaker of the Earth, Eater of Old Gods, take from me the priceless prize of my stolen weapon!” I stabbed the sky with Ray. “If you dare!”

  Set, returned to shape of man, stood sopping among his troops upon his riverbank. Above his legions’ screaming, he yelled up to the sky.

  “Do you hear this, gods?

  “Do you hear this, all my fighters?

  “All you fools who followed this Sparrow-Prince?

  “He’s a coward! A willing slave! You all heard him—he surrenders! Groveling like an old and ugly whore for moldy bread!

  “He wants to give me his weapon in exchange for mercy? I’ll take it, and choose myself what to give him in return!”

  He waded forth and swam towards me.

  And when he was in the deepest waters, I threw Ray towards him, and he caught it easily and laughed in victory before hurrying forth to carve my organs from my spine.

  And then thunder burst the water from behind him.

  A mouth the width of an infinity of fallen souls smashed through the river’s surface.

  Waves burst over the Destroyer. He struggled gainst a new and boiling current as the mouth of the invincible Devourer, ten-tusks tall-and-wide and a thousand fangs less one, sucked him towards it.

  That mouth slammed down on Set’s enchanted pyrite armour, forged in hell’s unquenchable flames, unbreakable, and could not cleave his chest from belly.

  Set gripped a tusk of the Devourer and heaved, re-opening that monster’s mouth, a violation unlike any since the world was born. And with the other hand, he reached for Ray, the mightiest weapon of them all, to gut the beast and win control of Death’s own empire.

  And then in blackened sky, the moon was born, and descending from it, haloed by a ring of lunar light, was my transfigured Master.

  And at his side within his grip, my mother.

  She leapt from that embrace, sank into the water, emerged and swam towards the Devourer’s mouth, and climbing into it she gripped my uncle’s sword-fist, and with her other hand, jailed his mouth so that his words-of-power could not slither to the unseen and eternal worlds.

  The vast maw thundered shut, consuming its two prey, and the Devourer sank into the depths of river’s darkness.

  9.

  When I stood at last beside my forces, my generals urged me, “Let us track these bastards to the devil-cliffs and hack their hands from their betraying arms!”

  But I remembered hills of horror I had seen, and refused to become the Destroyer.

  Those who surrendered, we took in chains. Soon they’d join—even unwillingly—the Labourers who were purifying the Swamps and Savage Lands. Those who fought, we fought and killed.

  From the river bank, my Master Jehu, now the Ancestor Jehutí, spoke a final time to all survivors standing. I wanted with my entire spine for him to stay. Yet I knew he could not do so.

  “The time to end this war is now.” His voice was like the music of the sacred cavern, his blackness perfect, his chest a creche for stars. “So go to heal each other, bearing witness to the sun, while you raise a Golden Fortress for eternity.”

  He looked at my Mesnitu, my brother Yinepu, and then at me. And smiled.

  And then ascended to his shining palace in the centre of the secret Silver Desert on the moon.

  I was bleeding and exhausted. My bones ached like the earth’s after a quake. I faced my legions, found the words I needed, spoke them.

  “The sunrise . . . is coming.

  “By the sunrise . . . by every sunrise, we must . . . purify the Savage Lands wherever we find them. We must drain the Swamps of Death wherever they are. We must defeat the Destroyer . . . whoever he is.

  “We have to find all the lost farms where the children are bent over weeping from slavery and drudgery, and mak
e them stand. We have to find all those people hiding their faces, hiding them for shame of just how low they’ve been degraded, and the ones hiding their faces because they’re afraid of anyone discovering their crimes.

  “It’s our duty to reveal them both.

  “And all those people who’ve sunk down, the ones in the mines, the ones in the prison caves, the ones exiled to the lowlands by the Great Green Sea . . . we have to lift them up, too.”

  My people stood silently, like stones.

  “Do you hear me?” I shouted again. “We have to lift them up!”

  They murmured their agreement, but I wanted more than mere assent.

  “If you hear me, let me hear you!”

  “We have to lift them up!”

  “Let me hear you!”

  “We have to lift them up!”

  “Let the gods hear you!”

  “WE HAVE TO LIFT THEM UP!”

  10.

  And thus the war was over.

  I spent the night out on the open desert, crying for my mother.

  We were so long apart, then reunited in the worst of times, bound by blood, yet so unbonded.

  I remembered being held by her when I was little. I remembered her singing songs to me with stories that meant nothing, but a voice that held the world entire. I remembered sitting beside her at campfire, roasting skewers of meat and plantain, the dipping-oil bubbling-hissing as I held the cooking-meal inside the flame. I remembered her smile when I sang to her. I remembered her kissing both my cheeks again and again until I slept.

  I remembered her crying.

  The Book of Now

  1.

  Three nights after the fire, in the university hospital ICU, anointed with mysterious unguents, wrapped in protective linens.

  Eighty per cent of his body burned.

  Master Yimunhotep Ani.

  A living mummy.

  2.

  Street Falcons and adult Alchemists sat outside the room of Brother Moon around the clock. Some, without even having seen him, couldn’t bear at such close distance the thought of his holocaust, and did not return.

  But Raptor and Jackal sat or stood, sentinels, unwavering. They had no shifts that needed covering. The Hyper-Market: a black mansion chalked by ashes. If any peregrines had still been roosting on the market’s roof, the blaze had driven them away, and their aerie was carbon.

  Burned but not destroyed, the Street Laboratory itself was another casualty by person or persons unknown.

  In her lamentations, Araweelo Kaultom Farah wandered from station to station in the hospital, seeking answers, finding none.

  Fire inspectors inspected, police investigators investigated, but no Alchemist expected answers from the City.

  Means, motive, opportunity. . .

  Who benefited?

  Speculation raged:

  Thandie’s wacked-out mother, who’d stormed the Street Laboratory to call Moon a “Black Hitler” and scream, “One day, you mark my words—this whole place of yours is gonna burn”?

  Lexus and Marley, the Somali killers they’d driven off at point of sai and sabre?

  Doctor Liberia, drunk out of his fucking mind?

  The nazi skinheads from the Remand Centre?

  Babyface?

  Who was the Destroyer?

  And then there was the filth in the media and online, bullshit rants and accusations about Moon succumbing to his own botched arson, torching his own place for the insurance, or torching the Street Laboratory because he was revenging himself upon the City, or because he was trying to frame the cops and make himself a victim . . . .

  Pyrites.

  Raptor got permission from the fire department to go upstairs briefly to bag whatever clothes and other belongings of his he could salvage. Everything reeked of smoke.

  Some of it reeked of burnt meat.

  Vomitted all over the blackgrey floor.

  Sought water from the taps, but of course they didn’t work.

  Licking away the spew at the corners of his mouth, he spat it all out, wiped lips on sleeve while the fireman who stood nearby looked away.

  Insanely, he opened the freezer door, seeking the hailstone ice-egg wrapped in aluminum and sealed inside a jar.

  He hid his face from the fireman. Body buckling in silence.

  Wiped his nose and cheeks and eyes. Came down the sooted shaft that once had been the stairwell to the Palace of the Moon, now doomed for demolition.

  Raptor Deng Garang never returned.

  3.

  In the hallway outside the burn unit: Araweelo, Jackal, Seshat, Wa-Wa, Ãnkhur. Benched.

  On facing bench, Raptor, beside ’Noot. No one noticed, but beneath her folded-over jacket on the bench seat, her and Raptor’s fingers merged.

  Maãhotep strode up, raggedy, unshaven, glasses instead of contacts. Beside him was a much sharper-looking cat, the younger man Raptor’d seen that fateful morning at Maãhotep’s.

  They weren’t holding hands, but when they sat down in the empty space, the younger man briefly rubbed Maã’s right shoulder and biceps.

  Raptor’s gut ripped, burned with magma, but he forced himself to breathe, breathe, breathe . . . transforming . . . molten rock . . . into steaming water . . . then cooling it . . . .

  No one else paid Maã any mind beyond hello and sharing situation reports. Maã leaned forward, his elbows his spiking legs just above his knees. His “friend” rubbed his back with his left hand. No one else noticed, or if they did, they acted like they didn’t.

  Silence.

  Maã snapped upright in his seat. “My god!”

  Seshat: “What is it?”

  “I just realised—no one’s told Moon’s kids!”

  “Uh,” said ’Noot, “I just sent his step-daughter a Facebook two hours ago—”

  “Really? How long’ve you been in contact with her?”

  “Well, so far, not even at all. Raptor and Jackal and I’ve been trying to reach her since even before the fire. But she just blocked them—”

  Raptor, bulldozing himself to talk to Maã: “We tried finding his stepson, Ptah, but he’s not even on Facebook, at least, not under that name.”

  Maã’s face: like Raptor’d just said he’d been trying to milk a platypus. Turned back to ’Noot. “Has she blocked you?”

  “I don’t know yet—”

  He handed the young woman his X-Fone, asked her what she’d written to Kiya. She logged in, showed him her sent mail. Raptor read it over Maã’s shoulder.

  Your step-father has been horribly burned in an accident. He probably won’t live. If you want to say goodbye, I suggest you come immediately.

  Wasn’t true. Moon would not die. Couldn’t.

  Maãhotep glanced at ’Noot. “Good lord!”

  ’Noot looked mortified. “I was so blunt because she’d already even just blocked two attempts to reach her and we didn’t know what to do and—”

  “No, no, you did the right thing, ’Noot. And hey, look! She took your Friend request! She sent a message—I won’t read it, but where’s the—okay, under Info . . . . ”

  He punched in a number. “Kiya? Is that you? It’s Uncle Maã . . . . Right. Yeah, I’m so sorry . . . No, no . . . we don’t know . . . nobody knows . . . . Yeah, I think—”

  Looked over at Araweelo, lowered his voice.

  “No, that’s right. I wouldn’t wait.”

  Got up, put space between him and Raptor’s mum.

  “Do you and Ptah have valid passports? Can you make it today? . . . Yes, I know, but . . . do whatever you have to . . . . Look, that’s not an issue, all right? I’ll cover you both . . . . No, don’t worry about it. Just get here.”

  Raptor opened his eyes to the lawyer, seeing all the seams in his clothing, seeing missing buttons that weren’t yet missing, seeing grey hair that wasn’t yet grey. Seeing Maãhotep standing beside a river and up to his waist in lotus flowers breathing pollen into the breeze. Seeing Maãhotep reaping maize and lighting a fire and making c
ornmeal pudding for them all while the sun went down and someone played the kora, igniting stars with it.

  “Look, everyone,” said Raptor, standing and clearing his throat. “Could we . . . could I just suggest . . . that we move down to the cafeteria and step into a shenu? I know I could use some Daily Alchemy.”

  Everyone. Glances. Araweelo and Maãhotep’s friend looked unsure. Were they expected to leave?

  “You’re welcome to join us. It isn’t hard. Just . . . when I say Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh, you say it too, all right?”

  He introduced himself to Maãhotep’s friend, a brother named Gamal.

  Shook his hand. And smiled at him.

  In a clear space in the caf, standing with ’Noot on one side and Gamal on the other, he suggested something totally unorthodox for Daily Alchemy, but no Nubian standing there complained.

  They all held hands.

  “By the sunrise, I choose to resurrect myself . . . . ”

  4.

  “Geometrically, we’re the originals, y’feel me?”

  Jackal spat fire, and the crowd caught it, raised it on torches crackling to the sky.

  Camera men and photographers digitised the speaker, the people, the zooming and rubbernecking traffic. Cops kept their distance, except the barely-undercovers who stood out like vitiligoed skin.

  “We were there on Resurrection Day, when Brother Moon was handing out the first scrolls!”

  “Transformed!”

  Beyond a couple of hundred civilians, musta been all two hundred Falcons there, from occasionals and hangers-on to the core fifty and the nine originals who’d transformed up to the Create-Supreme Scroll. Kids whom Moon, Seshat and Maãhotep had taught, fed and fostered—neglected limestone they’d cut, smoothed, polished and placed into their pyramid.

  And when Jackal hit it, they were widdit.

  “When hardly anybody knew him, we were there!”

  “Transformed!”

  5:00 pm, so all the news cameras would be there. Inside the Norwood schoolyard on the busy nexus of 95th Street and Khair-em-Ãnkh-Tawy, so four directions of drivers would see them.