Opener of the Sky

by Mary R Woldering

  Marai watched the look of quiet shock on the older man’s face, followed by the prayer:

  “I am the Lion-god who cometh forth with long strides.

  I have shot arrows, and I have wounded my prey.

  I am the Eye of Horus,

  I have arrived at the domains.

  Grant that the Asar Ani may come in peace.”

  Mtoto Akaru Sef bowed his head, as if he wanted to weep. He had recited the fare you well and good luck in the afterlife prayer in such moving tones that both Marai and Djerah bowed their heads in temporary misery.

  “I had not sensed this as the thing that had come upon our land,” the Akaru shook his head. Marai noticed the wife reaching to soothe him by rubbing his neck. “I did not know him man-to-man very well once he ascended. We met more when he was a prince and would come up here to do commerce. I saw his daughters growing up. I did know of him and of his great sorrowing because he was not fierce, and of his poor children’s deaths. I loved and chose his pattern of mercy. If his son is merciful, he will suffer for it too. Some in the north say kings should act as punishing gods toward their wayward citizens and not as caring men.”

  Underneath the old man’s placid demeanor, Marai sensed a kind personal power from which came this attitude of peace. It didn’t explain Akaru’s initial uneasiness at the gate. He startled a little when the old man gave voice to his thoughts as if Marai had spoken aloud.

  “I know you sensed evil and harshness in our land, but know it is the prince who brings it,” he dipped more bread into the sauce and passed bowls of soup as the servant refreshed them. “There are warriors who are true blood of my father who wish to end young Prince Maatkare’s life… more this year, even though he has stolen none of our women for his pleasure or taken our cattle for his food. He has actually almost behaved himself.”

  Their magic taming the beast? Marai found himself thinking. No, the cost is still too great.

  “…And memories of his past bad acts are too long,” the Akaru finished the big man’s thought. “Oh I do have men who want to go up against him in spite of my forbidding it. I have set in motion another ‘thing’ however, because he has threatened me. Your news of the passing of our Father Menkaure has both explained and changed much. If men go and succeed in slaughtering the prince and his troops, Kemet’s reprisal at the death of one of its royal sons so close to the death of the king will be unequalled. His hunting season will be over soon. He will go and discover once again his place in the new king’s court.”

  “If there is one…” Marai blurted. He knew Wserkaf had told him that his wife and Daughter of the God despised the young prince and the Great One Hordjedtef. Because of her arranged title marriage to her half-brother the new king, she served as advisor of the heart. Wserkaf would become Great One and Hordjedtef would step down into long overdue retirement. Something in Marai’s heart found a moment of vengeful merriment. If she expels him because of the death of her sister, he will flee here and then be sorry he abused these people instead of forging allies to overtake the north and put the crown on his own head. He will find he has created enemies instead of allies.

  “I will go north, if I am able. Menkaure Khaket was a good man… a worthy god. He will be welcome among the stars,” there was another moment of reflection, “but men are frail. Our bodies die eventually,” he looked up, smiling again. “You tell me this, and tell me of the women you seek, yet neither of us truly understand why you both are still here supping with me.”

  Marai knew that, and knew no real information had been given except that Maatkare and the women were not likely to be at the Prince’s home encampment for another week or two. All of the rush to get here had been pointless. He dabbed a piece of the bread in a kind of pale bean sauce livened with a fiery pepper that had just been brought out. Djerah did the same, then seized wine to cool his mouth. Akaru’ earrings jingled as his head shook with laughter.

  “You said you have not seen the women, yet you know they are not in any true danger. How do you know this?” Marai asked.

  “When he arrived, they stayed on the boat, guarded. Even so, he pointed out he had rethought taking women from us because we had behaved and produced good tribute. He told me then of the one Deka; boasting of her and claiming I most assuredly ought to know her. He would not allow them out. I suppose he thought they might try to escape if their feet were on dry land. I sense they have tried twice before,” he sighed. “I cautioned him that these were women, not animals he has captured; that he ought to respect them even better than he respected his best warriors, lest they conspire about his doom.”

  “And?” Marai breathed out in frustration over the need to storm wherever that prince might be whether he knew the location or not.

  “He’s a hard young man, and not too given to listen to good advice. The first night I told him he needed to be respectful… that I was tired of his mistreatment of women over the years because of something that happened when he was a boy. I ordered oil soap and perfume taken to his boat for them to wash.” He sipped at the beer that finished the appetizers. “In the morning when he came back and I did his reading, I told him to go home because things had changed and it would be evil piled on vengeance piled on dying if he stayed. I told him of the stars in position for the descent of the storm maker. You know him as Sutek. We call him Sebiumeker and find him more like Atum.” The Akaru sighed a little, “I already told you he essentially called me a liar and left saying he would prove his own truth and bring the woman who was of our land to see me in the evening. Fearing he would hurt her in front of me or do some other evil thing, I went to visit my grandson some leagues away in Buhen. He is a young priest, and my ‘inside man’ to what goes on in the northland. He had recently come from his duty in Khmenu two days in advance of our young prince.”

  “But you came back. You saw something else in the stars?” Marai asked.

  “I had a vision of the woman, calling out, but could not see her face clearly, just her noble color. The other two were with her, following. I believe he takes special care of the one of Ta-Seti. He has long preferred the self-discipline and inner power of our women, even those who are peasants. It challenges him.”

  Marai felt more than a chill at his words. He remembered the vision of Deka and the prince in the well, and of seeing her spiritually and physically overpowered by a beautiful and sensual young man with the look of a wolf. Has she come to her senses now that she’s in her own land? Will she even try to escape him? He couldn’t sense that anything had changed. In his most casual thoughts, she was evidently willing to be with him. Of Ariennu and Naibe he sensed only a mild worry.

  Akaru-Sef signaled that the main courses be brought out. Servants brought out more beef and roast goose, breads of varied sweetness and shapes, grain and bean delicacies, and sweet little vine fruits and nuts. It was quiet. Marai knew any entertainers or dancers were away as well as all but the chief wife. Only a few servants, guards, and cooks had returned.

  He stared past all of the food into the quiet of the old man’s eyes, knowing the Akaru was drawing him out; reading him the same way the priests did. In a moment’s flash, their eyes locked. He found himself studying the man’s balding profile, the high but backward sloping elongated forehead. Profile of the gods he had been told. His nose was narrower than typical Kemet noses, but still lobed and proud. It was the color of his skin and hair that was off. That he held any sort of title or honor in this place of deep colored men and women amazed Marai. He should have been drowned at birth with his looks.

  “She told me I would find you here. Deka even told me your name, ‘Akaru Sef’, from her own vision.” Marai then sent a silent thought. Your face. Something about it strikes me, though, like something in a dream.

  “I see you looking at me and I hear your question. My face is nothing; just unusual… not like those born here, yet I was born not far from here. It is perhaps a story that bears as much long telling as the one you will not state to young Djerah; abo
ut how you came to be healthy and unbent by age when your years are greater than my own, and what the nature of the Ntr stones is.”

  “I know little of them but that they are what is left of a noble race from beyond the firmament,” Marai paused a little, hesitating because he still thought Djerah didn’t need to hear some of this. He saw the older man frown almost imperceptibly, wrapping hot-sauced meat in his bread and eating it demurely.

  After a thoughtful silence the old man spoke again.

  “Deka. You and Prince Maatkare say her name is or was Deka? In our language we have such a word. It means ‘one who pleases’.” Akaru-Sef smiled a little wider, sipping a dark and pungent wine. “It’s a child name or a pet name. It would never be her name if she were truly of this place. A grown woman is never asked to be ‘pleasing’ to a man or even to a company of other women. When a woman is happy, she chooses to give happiness to her lover, not to ‘please’, just to be.” He offered another cup of wine to Djerah, who, unused to such strong drink, was starting to feel drowsy.

  Marai caught another change of expression in the old mans’ face as if he was searching for the answer to Deka’s mystery himself. His eyes glimmered only once before he spoke again.

  “You shared your spirit with her, but did not ask for her body. The prince who has her now takes it without asking, but that is his nature as a hunter. He will possess all he encounters, or he will destroy it. You will struggle to no good end for her until that day when she asks you to come to her.” Then, he relaxed as if thinking about the woman was upsetting him but he was blocking out that misery. “Let me tell you of this place and its legends so you understand what is coming…”

  Marai frowned, not interested, but Akaru saw that. “You wonder how what I tell you is important to you on your quest?” he asked. “Understand only that it is important…”

  The sojourner’s thoughts drifted a little as he listened to Akaru tell how the nature of the god had changed. At the same time, he contemplated and simmered over the thought that Deka might be lost to him forever.

  I can’t let myself think that, even though I never won her over in the first place. I still have to go to her, just to see if this prince holds her against her will as he holds Ari and Naibe. If we come apart, it makes no sense because she has the stone in her brow same as the rest of us. We’re supposed to be together.

  “Chaos is coming loose now…” Akaru-Sef began. “The seasons are dry in recent years… as if a famine comes. Soon we will go up to Buhen across the river and into the hills beyond forever if we survive. Each year we must do that when the water from the underground river dries. This year, the water may be gone for good,” he sighed. “I think it’s time now, especially now you are here and the king precedes me into the west.”

  Marai and Djerah listened to him continue the tale of how Qustul Amani should have gone dry long ago. “It has always been a gift of greenness in the wilderness, but we are a hardy people. Two days south there is better grazing land. My grandson is governor there. This year, once the new king gives his stamp, I will pass the ruler ship to him or to descendants of my father’s bodily sons and live out my days with a few servants and wives down there. All I have to do after that is endure young Maatkare once a year. Maybe even that will pass when the lions abandon it and the green does not return.”

  Hear me, my Man Sun

  Marai heard the faintest of whispers. Deka, he thought, then continued listening to the Akaru.

  PART 3: THE STORM

  CHAPTER 14: THE LINK

  Marai and Djerah returned to the shore after their unofficial “Welcome to Qustul Amani” meal and pulled the boat out of the water.

  “I wish we could just go in the morning after we rested,” Djerah muttered. “He isn’t going to help with anything. Says we’ll have warriors, thinks about it, and then says it’s a bad idea.”

  “And go where?” Marai turned the boat over, stowed the very normal looking oars and furled sail, and stood up. “Go find this prince? I could, I suppose. I could have sent death ahead of me, too, but then I might have destroyed more than I needed to.” He straightened up and stretched, sensing the elder’s disquiet as he finished his business and trailed over to them.

  “By the way Djerah, things are not always obvious or revealed. Sometimes the real meaning of a vision comes out much later,” Marai thought about the killing of the thieves so many years ago and realized how much it still bothered him.

  “Well that’s done,” The elder announced, “and no news of our prince. Stay the night while I meditate, though. In the morning I may have a fresh idea, maybe a prophecy for each of you. Our prince did not like his… maybe yours will be a better one.”

  “I have magical things to show you while we wait on some of this…” he waved his hands in the air as if he was clearing some muddled mess out of the air between the men. Mess around us. Spirit tells me much of your questioning will be answered as you learn of me. Then, he continued aloud, “come with me while I tell you more.” He trailed past the men, beckoning almost shyly for them to follow.

  Marai urged Djerah to quit the attitude of complaining and come with them.

  “First, just call me Akaru or Akaru-Sef… It’s easier for you than my many given names,” he began, leading the men out of the walls of the small estate. “It’s a title, but just easier…”

  “What does the whole thing mean? Even your given name. It sounds like a Kemet name, not Ta-Seti,” Djerah trailed along with Marai and the elder. He finished eating an extra chunk of melon and bread he snagged from the repast.

  “Mtoto means ‘child’ and Akaru-Sef is ‘Lion-god yesterday’,” the old man smiled. “As for my given name, Metauthetep… it means Metaut, my father, is satisfied. I also have a throne name given by the spirit which is not spoken aloud. I was given that name by King Djedphre when I was presented to him by Old Djedi. That king wished me to replace my father when he went into the West. It’s part of the Suph – the treaty. In return, I was educated in the school of Djehuti at Nekhen, Khmenu and in Ineb Hedj until I was well versed in everything mathematical, scientific, and spiritual that I would need to be a wise but compliant ruler here.”

  “So actually, all of your names are titles,” Marai shrugged.

  The three men had moved a distance from the actual walled city and walked up a slight hill in the clear, hot afternoon. A slight wind had begun to prevail from the west.

  He’s right about the drought, and once that comes the dust storms will be nasty, especially if they don’t rain out at the end, the sojourner mused.

  Come and see

  Marai heard the small child’s voice laughing in his thoughts. It was as gentle and loving as he remembered it had been long ago. When he had first heard it, he had been cowering in the back of his cave because the night sky had just gone brilliant with green light that came through a pink orb in the sky. Now that he thought about it, he realized that light was like the orb that had enclosed his boat when they traveled at a faster than possible speed. The voice had been Naibe’s seductive voice, but it had also been his dead wife Ilara’s voice.

  “Come and see...” Akaru’s voice mirrored the child-voice from long ago. When Marai heard it this time, he chilled, knowing that old man’s voice really was one of the unidentified voices he had heard so long ago.

  So, the Children knew about him. I knew that, because there were supposed to be three of us. This puts a seal on it, Marai thought.

  He saw Akaru’s eyes twinkle in childlike merriment and great pride when he looked back over his shoulder at him and Djerah as he led them along the outer wall to the western end of town. Something about the old man was just too irresistible, not of earth, and almost too peaceful.

  Marai had seen the platform they approached earlier when he and Djerah came in, but he hadn’t thought about it until now. It rose half-way up the exterior wall. In the center of a temple-like enclosure was a smaller square that rose higher than the wall, topped by a walk. Inside of tha
t was a small version of an Eternal House with its four equal triangular shapes rising to a smart lime-white point.

  “Yours?” Djerah asked, “I worked on the one for Menkaure during the floods,” he whispered as if they approached a sacred ground. “I will tell you right now that one this size makes much more sense.”

  “It is also my observatory. I built a temple around it and a tomb pit under it for later,” Akaru Sef beamed. “It is where I have had visions of what will come to pass.” He instructed the guards who had come with them to put in the key so the bolts to the entry slid back. The men followed the sepat governor up the brick steps to the top of the observatory wall. Once again, they were aware of a steady-but-gentle breeze.

  “Feel this wind, how hot and dry it is?” Akaru-Sef wet a finger in his mouth and held it up, showing how it dried instantly. “When the wind is like this, it withers our fields and with it the grazing grass. We are too low in water so soon after the flood, but down in Kemet, they won’t feel it until the New Year.”

  “Well someone needs to tell the king to implore to his brother gods. If it’s a low flood in his rising year that spells bad luck for our whole world,” Djerah started.

  “Which is what I told Prince Maatkare when I told him to go home. I hoped he would tell the king then why he went home early,” the old man insisted.

  “And so the fool thought you just wanted him off your land and not hunting or bothering the girls here. I’ve never met him, but that’s the way a dog behaves.” Marai scoffed.

  “Ah, then you know another thing about him. The ‘dog of war’ affinity…” the elder snickered like a youth who told a dirty story.

  “Seen in a vision, only.” Marai shook his head and thought: Dog of War has been nipping at the leg of the War Bull too long now and needs to stop.