Stolen Souls

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  STOLEN SOULS

  By Jeffrey Sackett

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2011 Jeffrey Sackett

  Copy-edited by: Hunter Goatley

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Background Images provided by: http://ashensorrow.deviantart.com

  http://stiks-1969.deviantart.com/

  LICENSE NOTES

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  This novel is dedicated to my dear mother, with thanks for her support and encouragement; and to the memory of my father.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  All hieroglyphic texts and phrase combinations used in this book have been checked and double-checked with authoritative texts in the field of ancient Egyptian language, and I believe them to be grammatically and syntactically correct. Those readers who are to any degree familiar with ancient Egyptian may object to the occasional use of plural verb and enclitic constructions with singular subjects and predicate nominatives. I can only ask such people to read until they reach the point at which such usages are explained. Any other errors in grammar or construction are both unintentional and entirely my fault.

  As with many ancient writing systems, Egyptian hieroglyphs allow us to discover the consonants used in their spoken language, but not the vowels. Thus the romanization system used herein, while standard among contemporary Egyptologists, should not be regarded as accurate. It merely represents the sound of spoken Egyptian to as great (or little!) a degree as we can surmise.

  Those readers who do not know that the English language once employed polite/plural and familiar/singular second person pronouns may incorrectly assume that in using the latter I am attempting to ape Biblical speech. I urge such people to dig their old high school English notebooks out of the back of the closet, assuming that they went to school back in those distant days when such things were still taught.

  Interested readers can delve somewhat more deeply into the sequence and nature of the historical events to which reference is made in this book by consulting J. H. Breasted's seminal work, A History of Egypt, and R. K. Webb's Modern England.

  This is a work of sensationalist fiction. All non-historical characters and contemporary events recounted in this book are therefore fictional as well, thank God.

  J.S.

  Homage to thee, O my divine father!

  Do thou embalm these my members, for I would not perish and come to an end, but would be like unto thee, who never saw corruption. Come then and strengthen my breath, O LORD of the winds! Stablish me, stablish me, and fashion me strongly, O LORD of the funeral chest! In truth it hath been decreed that in me shalt thou see thy likeness, and that my face shall look forever upon the face of the god! How long, then, have I to live?

  Millions of years.

  A life of millions of years . . .

  —The Egyptian Book of the Dead, XLV and CLXXV

  For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth; and though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

  —Job 19:25-26

  Credo quod absurdum est.

  —Tertullian

  PROLOGUE

  A Winter comes unbidden and largely unnoticed to the hill country of Upper Egypt. The Nile, that ancient lifeline of the ancient land, drifts lazily down from the uplands of the Sudan and the mountain vastness of Ethiopia, following its eternal path toward the Aswan High Dam through the largely unpopulated wasteland of desert. The Nile has seen much in its immortal meandering. It has seen pharaohs and caesars, caliphs and sultans, kaisers and tsars, emperors of France and kings of England. Its banks have resounded to hymns of praise to Allah, to Christ, to Osiris. And when winter comes, the Nile is as impervious to its arrival as are the red hills and pitted cliffs of the empty land which stretches out on both sides toward the barren sands of Libya on the west and the warm blue waters of the Red Sea to the east. Winter means nothing to Upper Egypt. It means no change of climate, no alteration of the ocher cast of the endless sand, no particles of ice in the warm, sluggish river. It is but a date on the calendar, a reminder that the mountains of Ethiopia are busy freezing next spring's floods in their icy wombs. It means nothing to the river. It means nothing to the hills.

  The warm January breeze wafted gently over the rocks and sand, lifting occasional wisps of dust up into the clear blue sky. Small lizards and beetles scurried hither and yon from the sunlight to the shade afforded by the infrequent slopes. The world of Upper Egypt was silent but for the intermittent scraping of scales and spindly legs upon pebble and stone; but for the low moaning whisper of the wind; but for the distant cries of birds gliding gracefully through the boundless blue vault of heaven; but for the occasional splash of a frog returning from the banks to its river home.

  These were the only sounds.

  Except for the chanting.

  From a distance the ruins of the ancient holy place were indistinguishable from the rock mounds and sheer cliff faces which interrupted the monotony of the desert. The roof of the predynastic mastaba had collapsed thousands of years before, and the rays of the sun beat mercilessly down upon the exposed interior of the small temple, reflecting an almost painful brilliance from the smooth surfaces of the external walls. Once these walls had been faced with the purest, smoothest white stone, but the facing had been removed long before, in the days of the later Ramesids, to be used in the construction of other buildings far to the north. The walls were still smooth now, but the smoothness came, not from human effort, but from the incessant desert wind which had caressed the mastaba continuously for thousands of years.

  Within the interior of the ruined temple were forty-two people, standing rigidly in obviously predetermined positions. The temple had been designed and built to accommodate precisely this number, its floor plan devised to provide specific places for each one of the forty-two people. There had always been forty-two, never one less, never one more, since before the days of Nasser and Sadat; since before the days of Islam and Christianity; since before the days of Alexander of Macedon and Cambyses of Persia; since before the days of Rameses the Great and Amenhotep the Magnificent. When Menes created the Kingdom of Egypt by uniting the hill country with the land of the delta, this religious community was already old beyond memory. When the priests of Egypt invented a calendar and gave History its first date, 4241 B.C., centuries before Menes, this religious community could already look back upon a past as far distant from that calendar as Rameses was from Hitler.

  And they had always numbered forty-two, for there are forty-two judges in the Hall of the Two Truths where Isis, Osiris, and Thoth preside over the judgment of the souls of the dead. Each judge is a god. Each of the forty-two people standing motionless beneath the Egyptian sun on that warm January day was the priest of one of the forty-two gods.

  The people were dressed simply, almost austerely, i
n clean, unadorned white linen. Each wore a medallion upon a golden chain, fixed close to the throat. Each medallion bore upon it four simple hieroglyphs, and three of the four were identical on each of the forty-two medallions. Each bore the ankh, the loop-topped cross which was the symbol of life; the head of a jackal, symbol of the god Anubis, guardian of the grave; and the tekenu, an armless human form seated upon a narrow platform.

  The fourth hieroglyph was different on each of the medallions. An old woman who was the priestess of Isis wore a medallion which bore the head of a cow, which was both the symbol of Isis and her visage. A much younger woman's medallion displayed the head of a cat, the animal of Bast, goddess of pleasure. Here the baboon of the mood god, Thoth; there the falcon of the war god, Montu. The bull of Ra and the ram of Amon, the hawk of Horus and the crocodile of Sobek, the wolf of Wepwawet and the beetle of Khephra each found a place on the medallion of their respective priests. But the ankh, the jackal, and the tekenu were on each of them, for the ankh symbolized their hopes, the jackal symbolized their primordial god, and the tekenu symbolized their bridge to eternal life.

  Not that they possessed eternal life: no, these were human beings, not gods, and they would pass from this world at the end of their measure of days. But successors would be chosen, examined, taught, and initiated, and the cult would continue as it had for countless thousands of years. Each generation of priests hoped that it would be the last generation, that the fulfillment of the promise would grace their priesthood, that they would be the ones to escape from the gloom of the grave. This each generation hoped for. And each generation had died.

  But the cult survived through the centuries, through the millennia. It survived Christianity and Islam, foreign conquest and revolution—always furtive, always cautious, always disguised. Always there.

  The cult survived because its members knew things which the world had forgotten. They knew that the spirits of the ancient gods still roamed through the ruins of their ancient temples. They knew and practiced the ancient rituals in the ancient tongue. And they knew the secret before which even kings had once trembled.

  The forty-two priests and priestesses stood in a triangular formation. At the head of the assembly, who faced an empty recessed cubicle which once, long ago, had contained a statue of the god Anubis, stood a bent, frail, wizened old man. The gentle wind seemed almost to unbalance him as it caused his linen robe to flap slightly around his skinny legs, as it drifted over his bald head and through the long, wispy white bread which hung down from his wrinkled, pallid face. His voice was soft and tremulous, but his tone bespoke an authority born of long accustomation, for he had been the high priest of the cult for the past threescore years and had been the priest of the god Set for a decade prior. Of late he had resigned himself to the approach of death, for he had become shorn of hope that his would be the generation to defeat the passage of time.

  But his hope had been reborn just three days before, given new life by, of all things, a small advertisement buried in the back pages of a foreign newspaper. And so he had sent out word to his people and called them to this hasty assembly. It was the age-old custom for them to meet on this spot on the night of each new moon and conduct their rituals beneath the black sky in the midst of darkness so deep that the flickering stars could not relieve it. But no one had objected to this meeting at midday in midmonth, for the rebirth of the old man's hopes had breathed new life into their own. They had come eagerly to this spot, each one repeating the same words silently within: I shall not die, I shall not die. Millions of years. A life of millions of years.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru," the old man chanted in the long-dead tongue of ancient Egypt.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru," the assembly chanted in response. Homage to you, O gods.

  The old man nodded a signal to two guards who stood in the shadows of the eastern corner of the mastaba. They were not priests, not members of the cult. They were from the poor dregs of Egyptian society, recruited and paid well for their service and their silence, given food and women and comfort and, unbeknownst to them, periodically killed and replaced. The two guards walked forward, bringing with them a terrified girl in her early teens who screamed and kicked with futile desperation against her captors. The guards dragged her before the cracked and pitted altar which stood a few feet removed from the eastern wall of the mastaba, and pulled her arms outward, twisting them up so that she leaned her upper body over the surface of the block of broken stone. Her pleading cries and tears seemed to be unnoticed and unheard as the old man lifted the ceremonial dagger from the center of the altar and placed its tip against her throat. "Anet hrauthen neteru," he repeated.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru," the assembly answered. Homage to you, O gods.

  The old man drove the blade into the girl's flesh and her warm lifeblood spurted out onto the altar, captured and held in the bowl-shaped depression which had been carved into the center, as the excess flowed freely down the front and sides, seeping into the spaces between the ancient stones of the mastaba floor. The girl's trembling body soon grew still, and the light in her eyes flickered and then went out. The guards removed the sacrifice from the altar and tossed it unceremoniously back into the shadows of the corner. The old man then immersed the already bloody knife in the warm pool of sanguine liquid upon the altar top. "Anet hrauthen 'Anpu," he chanted, lifting the knife high as if in offering.

  "Anet hrauthen 'Anpu," the assembly chanted. Homage to you, Anubis.

  The old woman who wore the symbol of Isis upon her medallion walked slowly to the front of the assembly. She knelt awkwardly and raised her flabby arms upward in a gesture of praise as the old man touched the bloody dagger to her forehead and chanted, "Anet hrauthen Auset."

  "Anet hrauthen Auset," came the chanted reply. Homage to you, Isis.

  The priests approached the altar one by one, each in turn kneeling before the high priest and receiving a drop of the sanctified blood upon the forehead. "Anet hrauthen Nebtkhet," he chanted as he touched the blade to the forehead of the priestess of Nephthys.

  "Anet hrauthen Nebtkhet," they chanted. Homage to you, Nephthys.

  "Anet hrauthen Tekhuti." The priest of Thoth knelt before him.

  "Anet hrauthen Tekhuti." Homage to you, Thoth.

  "Anet hrauthen Kheru." The priest of Horus knelt before him.

  "Anet hrauthen Kheru." Homage to you, Horus.

  "Anet hrauthen 'Ausar."

  "Anet hrauthen 'Ausar." Homage to you, Osiris.

  They moved in a slow and regular cadence, approaching, kneeling, receiving the bloody dagger, rising, returning to their places. When the last of the priests had resumed his place, the old man turned once again to the spot where long ago had stood the statue of Anubis. He raised his arms outward, the palms of his hands facing the sanctum and his fingers pointing toward the sky, and bowed his head.

  "Au arina neterhetepu en neteru. Perchkheru en khu," he chanted. I have made offerings to the gods. I have sacrificed to the spirits.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru," they responded. Homage to you, O gods.

  "'Anpu kheq testa, nekhemkua ma aterit." Anubis, Prince of Eternity, deliver me from calamity.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru."

  "'Anpu neb nest, nekhemkua ma 'aputat utetiu themesu." Anubis, Lord of Thrones, deliver me from the messengers of evil.

  "Anet hrauthen neteru."

  "'Anpu neb Ut, 'Anpu chent neter het, 'Anpu neb nifu—" Anubis, Lord of the City of Embalming, Anubis, Dweller in the Tomb of the Gods, Anubis, Lord of the Winds.

  He did not chant the final supplication. It burst from his throat, a frenzied, desperate cry. "'Anpu, nekhemkua ma ab!"

  Anubis, deliver me from death!

  As with one voice, the priests and priestesses cried, "'Anpu, nekhemkua ma ab!"

  "'Anpu, nekhemkua ma ab!"

  "'ANPU, NEKHEMKUA MA AB!"

  Then they were silent. They stood motionless as the old high priest turned slowly and faced them. He spoke in his normal Arabic tongue
as he said as loudly as his feeble old voice could manage, "You have all heard some part of the truth, but allow me to lay all rumors to rest." He paused dramatically, and then said, "The holy ones have been found!" An excited buzzing arose from the assembly, and the old man raised his hand to quiet the noise. When silence had returned, he continued. "We must prepare for the ceremony. We must repair the holy place and make ready to receive the gift of the god. And we must send a member of our company to escort the holy ones on their long journey back to the land of their birth."

  A number of eager voices issued forth from the assembly to volunteer for the mission, but this was not a democracy. It was an autocracy, in the tradition of the ancients—a theocracy, as it had been in olden times. The old man raised his hand once again, and the voices died away. "The priest of Thoth shall go," he said quietly.

  A young man standing close to the front of the triangular formation lifted himself to his feet and stood proudly amid the kneeling priests and priestesses. The old man motioned him forward, and he approached the front of the ruined mastaba with slow, measured steps. He knelt once again before the altar, as he had done a few minutes before. The old man placed his hands upon the young man's head and said, "Ahmed Hadji, may the gods bless you and give you success in your mission."

  The young man muttered, "I am unworthy of this honor."

  "You are worthy of more than this," the old man replied, "and great will be your reward when you return. But listen carefully, my son! Guard yourself against eagerness, for haste gives birth to error. You are charged to return to Egypt with the lord Sekhemib and the others, but you must not seek a tekenu in that distant land. Here shall we prepare for the ceremony, and here shall the tekenues be brought forward. Here shall we bask in the radiance of the god. Here shall we see the old promise fulfilled."