Opener of the Sky

by Mary R Woldering

  Djerah tensed and struggled to rise, then gasped and fell back.

  He’s moving too much, too soon. Marai’s gaze narrowed. It puzzled him that the Children of Stone hadn’t thrown the young man into a deathlike sleep that would last for several months. The poison I took at Hordjedtef’s hands couldn’t have been as harmful to me as this poor one’s beating, but he can already move and even reason. He moved closer then tapped his brow a little, hoping Djerah was able to receive his thoughts.

  Be still. Know I am here. Don’t move or let him upset you.

  “Be still. Know I am here,” Maatkare looked up at the sojourner but couldn’t resist the mockery. “You already know I hear thoughts, fool. I showed you that yesterday and you’re still not guarding them from me. And did I not say this man is still my responsibility and my prisoner because of his crimes? And as for my Grandfather poisoning you; was it not true that our gods in their ultimate wisdom led you on such a dance that you drank the harmful thing of your own free will?” The prince watched the big man carefully, tilting his head to the side in almost boyish fascination, then glanced at Ari.

  “Oh you’re not going to demand we let you keep him…” Color drained from Ariennu’s face. She bent close to the young man.

  “Oh, you’re quite the tender charmer when you want to be, aren’t you?” he smirked. “So gentle with him, like a mother. I know you, Red. He’s just something new for you. Your man came back from the dead and went straightaway to your young honey sister. I have your other sister in kind eating from my hand. Checking your options and making new plans, eh?”

  Ari’s face reddened with ire.

  “You think… you…” Ariennu stammered, taken aback and too furious to finish.

  “You see, I know how you ka’t conspire and think. I saw it plenty as a youth. One has her prize, the other plots to take it away from her or to create envy by flaunting herself for another where he can see.”

  “Your Highness,” Marai spoke in very low and even tones, squatting a respectful distance from the prince. “She is my wife, as are the others, including the one you think you have swept from me. I’m asking that you respect that; one man to another.”

  “Have I not been respectful and honorable?” one of Maatkare’s winged eyebrows raised. “I could have given you my entire regiment to deal with yesterday but instead I allowed you to come in, heal a man who still deserves death, and sleep with your former women, all because the one you wrongly call Deka asked it of me.”

  Marai blinked, suddenly awed by how much the prince reminded him of Count Prince Hordjedtef in a younger and perfected body: education, fitness, skill, and seductiveness. Yet he was, on top of all else, just as pitiless and ruthless as his grandfather and all of the kings of Khufu the Great’s seed.

  If he did do this at Deka’s bidding, Marai thought, he must have seen an advantage to it. I doubt he knows the meaning of the word love or devotion, Marai mused, moving a little closer.

  “But all good things change,” Maatkare addressed Marai suddenly as if he had still heard the sojourner’s thoughts. “You’re here and would like to take everyone back. I’ve told you yesterday that isn’t going to happen. And just so you know, I’m as learned as any of my cousins who feel entitled to these Ntr Stones. Perhaps in some ways I am moreso. I’ve been examining these stones. I’ve already learned how to make them do some fairly amazing things.”

  Marai hadn’t noticed the prince had it at first, but at that moment Maatkare flourished a knife that had been tucked into his belt.

  “You see? This here; I dreamed this knife and my very thoughts created it and formed it on top of the stones while I watched. First, it vanished, but when I rose this morning, I thought of it again and this time it retains its form.”

  Marai’s eyes fastened on the knife. In that moment his world fell away and he saw a burly and grizzled raider challenging him at Wadi Ahu. It had been a lifetime ago. He had known so little about his new abilities through the Child Stone pulsing in his brow that early morning. He had been horrified to vomiting and fainting after he walked through thirty men snapping them in half, turning their own weapons on them and garroting them with their own clothing and jewelry.

  That man, whom Marai later learned was the leader of a band of wilderness thieves, N’ahab-atall brandished a knife that day that looked like a cruder version of Maatkare’s new blade. The first knife had a bone hilt carved like a crouching wolf that bit a bronze blade. This blade’s hilt was solid gold and the blade was made of a metal that had an almost crystalline sheen to it. The sheath of the raider’s blade had been wood carved as a naked woman with widespread legs receiving the wolf’s mouth… an insult to the goddess. This blade, fortunately, had no obscene scabbard.

  When Marai had recovered from the enormity of his deed that morning, he had taken the blade with the thought to destroy it in the fire, but then the world changed. He met the women. The knife had vanished and he had forgotten about it until now.

  “You are fascinated by it?” The prince noticed Marai’s pause, but didn’t sense his memory flooding him or the sojourner’s instant recall of a later dream in which he had seen a vain young prince searching for the Ntr Stones, based on his meditations of where they lay. All he had found was the burned encampment where a knife with a corroded blade lay discarded in the dirt.

  “I’ve seen the first one… up close.” Marai answered dully.

  Ariennu heard the word ‘knife’ mentioned, looked at the weapon the prince was showing and froze.

  “What the… It looks like N’ahab’s old knife. Goddess. How did you…”

  Maatkare smirked the sideways grin, then tittered a little too much like a jackal for Marai’s comfort.

  “I would say perhaps these little stones of yours like me after all. Or shall I say we just understand each other.” He carefully tucked the blade away in his belt and added, “You don’t like it, but you know everything that has taken place is all by the design of whatever race of gods pilot these marvelous little tools of heka.”

  Ariennu screwed up her mouth as if she wanted to scream, then decided to spit at his highness foot.

  Marai sensed it and stayed her with a gesture. Easy, woman. Don’t provoke.

  Damn him, Marai. He’s summoned N’ahab’s ghost with that knife. I swear! I stole the damned thing for him when we were just children and he carved out the goddess legs for it to fit in. Do something to him before I get myself killed doing it for you! Ariennu bowed her head, then grasped Djerah’s hands to keep herself from launching her fists at the prince.

  “And that worries you, doesn’t it?” the prince addressed Marai and Ari but at that moment…

  Naibe hurriedly fastened her straps and jumped up from her bed to leave the tent. She froze when Maatkare spoke again.

  “Go on, and when you’ve made your water, get your sister and the little ones in the box. I was just going to ask that she come join us this morning.”

  Naibe looked up at the guard by the tent flap and with a little hop speeding her step, she hurried to the blanket shrouded privy constructed for the women and then to the opening of the royal tent.

  Marai saw Deka meet her, then silently return with her as if she had been waiting for a signal. As soon as both women entered the women’s tent, the Ta-Seti woman took her place beside the prince.

  Deka, Marai attempted, but she didn’t respond. He knew she heard him, but understood she felt it was safer to wall her thoughts from him. Yesterday, when he had first seen her, the lack of response hadn’t caused such a great ache in his heart. When she assisted in Djerah’s healing, he had thought she was reaching out to him. Today, when he sensed the nothingness, something about it scared him.

  Deka, Nefira Sekhet Deka. At least show you can feel me, he tried again, because he had always been able to feel the women’s energy unless it was being actively blocked by external forces. Their inner voices had always joined the chorus of the Children’s voices as if they were speaking in a hush
ed, singsong cadence. Even Djerah’s music had started to whisper faintly through his own newly implanted stone. A wall existed in Deka’s heart when the sojourner sought any sort of feeling in her hard dark eyes.

  Deka, please… his glance was at once desperate and sad. How did I… how did we ever fail you so that you could completely cut us out? You know your stone weeps. I can feel her weep at the apartness from the rest of us. Know that. He felt ill. Maatkare’s self-pleased smirk didn’t help. He felt his self-control over the rage that had been building inside him over the weeks of his journey erode even more each moment the prince and Deka remained seated near him.

  Naibe-Ellit sensed Marai’s anguish as she sat beside him again. She embraced his shoulders and lay her head on them in sympathy.

  She hears you, my best love, Marai felt her thoughts solemnly whisper. I knew about it long ago; from the time you and I first loved… maybe even when I looked into the past that was hidden from her. She can’t come with us now. Maybe she will come back to us one day and maybe not. She just needs to be apart from us now.

  The prince sensed Deka’s turmoil in the silence and grasped her hand firmly. That touch woke her for a moment. She reached into the air, even though her head stayed bowed. An affectionate little spark danced from her fingertips to Marai’s stone.

  “Would you like to go with him; to take the son of my body from us?” Maatkare noticed the gesture she had given. The lack of emotion in his steady gaze switched to a moment of glaring cruelty. An almost doggish whine became spirit and moved through the air.

  Hurt Puppy? That’s affection? Strange. And she’s with child too? I didn’t sense that one, Marai saw his surprise mirrored in Ariennu’s and Naibe’s faces.

  A child? Naibe thoughts were happy at first, but Marai sensed that her second thought was about what kind of demon would come screeching from between Deka’s legs in some months. She shuddered, patting her own restless belly.

  Marai knew she was still worried that her own child might not be his, so he whispered: It’s my child, my goddess. Your little one sang it to me last night. And even if it was not, I would love it because you made it and brought it forth.

  Feeling her shiver in delight at that thought calmed his irritation at the prince for the moment.

  Ariennu fussed over Djerah again as if he had become all of the children she had given up so long ago.

  No,” Deka’s voice hesitated, but then moved ahead. “Nothing has changed in the night, as you have questioned, beloved.” She answered the prince, then turned to Marai.

  “My place is here with him, Man-Sun. So long ago I told you I wanted to know who I am. You knew this. When I am his, I know it. I’m glad you live for my sister’s sake and even mine, but I am unchanged in my destiny.” She looked for solace in Maatkare’s face, but seeing it unmoved, opened the box of Child Stones and picked up the fine cloth wrapper from the top.

  She reverently lifted Wserkaf’s crystal Eye of Truth wdjat, then looked up once again into Marai’s eyes. Her dark, slim hand gestured above the stones, summoning the seven that had been separated at one time. They rose and slipped into her cupped hands. The pulse from them as they nestled among each other on her palm caused her to shiver as if she had been gripped in ecstasy.

  Marai knew they were sending her a private message.

  “If I give these to you now, as a promise that we will all be together in time, will you release me?” she asked the big man plaintively, eyes looking directly at him. At the same time those eyes stared a thousand leagues away.

  “If you must have three women, seek another, my sweetest Man-Sun. It was always the Children’s intent that I be parted from you when I arrived in Ta-Seti. Did you not see it? I had hoped you would not grieve when that day came.” Her mouth moved as if she recited something out of a ritual.

  “It is why I could not allow you in my bed or to make me a child. I could not let you know the deepest part of my heart,” Her eyes closed as if the words of her truth had been a kind of farewell.

  Marai felt something in his thoughts explode. He knew Deka had said these things several times, but he had always thought it was her way of setting herself apart from Naibe’s sensuality and Ariennu’s brash attitude. He always assumed the four of them would come to her beloved ancestral home and then search for whatever she needed to know together.

  This is wrong, Deka. You know it is. You let this man overtake you like a thief and now you swear by him as if your soul has died. I see that. But leave us? Always intended it? Then you should say out loud that you used us and that you used the Children of Stone as well. He felt the dark rage he had battled settle at the top of his shoulders and move up the base of his neck the way he had felt it grow when the shape of the war bull Bakha Montu moved through him in Hordjedtef’s plaza and later at Wserkaf’s home. It had lurked and whispered like a clinging evil entity. It patiently repeated for him to strike and murder all of the evildoers throughout his entire journey. It wanted him to see and act on everything this grinning and self-assured prince had done as it dropped the masks that the Children of Stone had kept over the worst of moments.

  In one instant, he saw Ariennu released from the ladder on the prince’s boat; the way she had crawled to him and begged for Naibe’s life while he sneered at her. He saw Naibe in such dread of being drained by him that she decided to drown herself in an escape attempt. In all of the newly unmasked truth, he sensed Deka in the background, never opposing or defending her sisters in kind.

  Marai lunged and knocked Maatkare backward to the mat-lined earth so quickly the prince never suspected him. The sojourner felt his own transformation roaring through perceived reality as he locked the man’s head in the crook of his arm. His face went dark and the specter of the bull shape emerged. His other hand, now more hoof-like, pushed up and wrenched in attempt to snap the prince’s neck.

  Maatkare growled, fought and snarled, gnashing his suddenly sharp fangs and slavering jaws.

  Go on! Be the wolf. But I have your throat, so it’s just you. No cry for your men while I rip out your throat. He crushed the prince’s throat and felt the gristle beneath the cords of muscle and tendon start to give way. Too easy, but I want it to be slow so you will suffer and know the way you choked my goddess to draw her power. You can’t breathe. You have to give up your power before you die, Marai’s thoughts hissed deep into the young general’s conscience.

  Maatkare dug his heels into the earth and sank his claws into Marai’s arm. He hit, struggled and tried to free himself from the devastating grip as the defiant growls in his throat became hideous gurgles. His lips frothed and eyes blazed an angry gold.

  The men’s struggle spilled, thrashing and kicking around the woven mats as the prince bit, gnawed and tore through Marai’s forearm like a mad dog. The sojourner barely felt his skin rip open as his grip tightened and crushed into his opponent’s thrashing throat. Maatkare’s wolf-image briefly fled then re-formed with greater power, as the fight continued.

  “You stop this now! For the love of the goddess, don’t do this, either one of you!” Ariennu screamed, leaping to her feet and darting in to the fray. She pulled Maatkare’s head back and tugged on Marai’s profusely bleeding arm but the men were locked in a struggle she had little power to stop.

  Deka raised both hands in the defensive pose of an utterance, but stayed in her place on the mat, guarding the box of Child Stones.

  “Don’t you even think about it, or I will tear both of your arms out of the sockets.” Ariennu whirled, then turned to press on Marai’s collarbone to numb his wounded arm just as he made a final push on Maatkare’s throat.

  Astonished, Marai felt his grip loosen involuntarily. He noticed the pain and the blood that gushed from the torn and jagged skin on his forearm, then glanced at Maatkare who fell face forward on the scrambled mats. He clutched his crushed throat and gasped for air, unable to breathe or speak. Marai jumped up and began to kick him hard in the ribs and once under his chin that had begun to
half-heartedly transform into a muzzle again. He was about to fall on him once more when Deka hissed and began to crawl forward, eyes glowing red.

  Ariennu glared at her, then focused on a way to stop Marai herself. She leapt on his broad back and called into his ear:

  It’s over.

  You’ve won.

  You kill him and he wins

  You shame him. That’s enough for now.

  Hardly pausing to realize that she had used something like her own version of a voice of power, she pulled the big man back until he sat on his heels and began to shake his silver head. He snorted and gave a softened bellow of acceptance, then settled into a more human shape.

  When she saw that the worst appeared to be over, Ariennu slipped away and seized the wdjat as well as the seven stones that hovered nervously in midair above the box. She snatched them out of the air the way one might grab at flying insects, and put them in her skirt, then edged over to hold Marai away from any further challenges.

  Maatkare sprawled back with his hands at his throat. He gasped from lack of air and his face darkened as if Marai still strangled him.

  Deka reached the prince and gently licked Marai’s blood from his lips and face, then held him and rocked him, until she felt his deep shuddering gasp, cough, and rasping breath begin again. Then, licking her own lips in joy, she placed her hands on his throat to warm and heal it.

  Marai gripped the jagged edges of the wound on his arm together and winced. His stone had leapt into prominence and a shimmer of silver light cascaded over his face and down to his bleeding forearm. The bull form lurked in the corner of his conscience and projected forward intermittently over his human form.

  Ariennu laid her hand on his wound and warmed it the way she had seen Marai heal Djerah.

  Deka didn’t even attempt to hide the thoughts she sent to Maatkare from everyone else.

  You have prevailed against a god and been undefeated. You have the victory, she peppered his throat with little kisses until the prince stopped gasping and solemnly rubbed his half-crushed throat. See. He bleeds like a man. Kiss my mouth with his blood, beloved. Give me his taste.