Dion had said the priests, the mnasons, trained a lifetime learning to form ari-kat stone. They had constructed the many buildings on Aztlan Island using their series of secret gestures and their tightly knit clanship.
This ari-kat stone had built the Pyramids. Cheftu was certain of it. The limestone looked the same, and it would explain how such enormous, perfectly shaped rocks fit together flawlessly. They were poured. He smiled. Not only was Pharaoh Kufu’s Imhotep brilliant, but he was wily, passing on the legend of thousands of workers quarrying immense stones for tens of Inundations.
Now Cheftu understood why no one had ever known anyone whose family had worked on the Pyramids. Most likely the priests had poured the stone into molds, then poured more when they dried. In a land built of mud brick, it really was no surprise. It would have taken a few thousand people as opposed to hundreds of thousands of people.
Cheftu ate, then slept. When he awoke in the jewel-toned room, he ran over to his brick. It was cool, so he pulled away the wooden blanks and looked at it. A rectangle of limestone that looked as if it were quarried from the finest veins in Aswan. It weighed like limestone also. Cheftu was laughing to himself when he heard a faint noise.
Turning around, he saw that his breakfast had appeared—fruit and bread. He turned back to the table; the entire table, including the ari-kat limestone, was gone.
Another table was in its place, with another box, another flat surface. Except this one had a throwing wheel. Eating his fruit as he unpacked the box, Cheftu frowned over the ingredients. A vial of natural acid, a block of alabaster, rags, oil, and a template drawn on linen, round and fat on one end, narrowing, then bulging again before the neck. Last, a dried bladder. He picked it up, turning it over and around. A dried bladder?
Cheftu paced, drawing on his lessons and ideas. He had no idea how many days it had taken him to make the ari-kat stone or how many days he was expected to be in the pyramid.
What was he to make from this? He toyed with the block of alabaster. The stone was pleasantly weighted, the height just right for a perfume vial. Acid. Alabaster. Another Egyptian skill, praise Ptah!
He opened the acid vial and poured a little on the stone. … The reward was a satisfying hiss as the acid began to eat at the stone. Hands trembling, he poured the acid into the bladder, squeezing the flow onto the stone, controlling how and where the stone was formed.
The ability to shape stone.
CHAPTER 12
CHEFTU HAD BEEN IN THE PYRAMID FOR TEN DAYS. Chloe only hoped they were feeding him. What could take ten days? Instead of worrying, she was letting Atenis kill her. Slowly, painfully, and thoroughly.
Today they were working on pace.
Chloe thought she knew how to run; she had done a lot of it in the air force, and she had spent a fair amount of time running in ancient Egypt. However, according to Atenis, Chloe didn’t know the first thing about it.
First there had been the discussion of her running posture. She clenched her fists, a no-no; she also looked down. If I don’t, I will trip and break something, Chloe argued, but Atenis chided her: looking down shortened her stride. Sibylla had long legs, she should be able to eat up the henti. It was a major advantage over Ileana, who was shorter.
Then there was the critique of her footwork. No slapping, no heels hitting the ground. Run only on the balls of her feet.
The calluses Chloe was developing were as thick as bubble wrap, complete with popping blisters. If she were running a long distance, she needed to run heel to toe, propelling forward with her toes.
Chloe followed the path’s curve, wiping sweat off her brow with her elbow, keeping her hands loose. Running this way, on her toes, her shoulders immobile, did feel a lot better. She felt fleet, graceful, and the stretch of her leg muscles was … nice.
Most important, she was too busy to focus on Cheftu.
Chloe slowed to a stop before Atenis. The gray-eyed woman did not offer her encouragement, just put a hand on Chloe’s elbow and turned her around.
Another field away, Chloe saw a woman running. Her shift was short, her hair bound up, but she was poetry in motion. Fast, graceful, and like all great artists, she made the skill look effortless.
“Who is it?”
“Kela-Ileana.”
Chloe and Atenis watched the Queen of Heaven as she ran rhythmically. Chloe doubted she’d even broken a sweat. Not only did she look good in Aztlan’s elaborate clothing, but her body hummed like a working Jaguar auto. Chloe watched her competition, feeling more and more deflated. The earth shifted beneath them, and Chloe touched Atenis’ arm for support. A tremor. They were so often and so gentle that Chloe was not quite certain when they hit. Another? Or was she just nauseated from watching Ileana?
“You have a good chance,” Atenis said. “You need to find your pace though first.”
Chloe started to stretch, feeling her muscles bunch from stopping cold. “Teach me,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
After all, if this race were part of the reason she was here, she should give it her best.
Sibylla, if she still lived, said nothing.
THE VESSEL WAS FLAWLESS, SMOOTH, AND EVEN, so fragile that Cheftu could see light through it. The art of shaping stone. Two meals lay uneaten on the floor, and he rose from his crouched position and grabbed a piece of stale bread. Determined not to turn his back when the table changed, he yawned, forcing his eyes open.
He had no concept of day or night, he felt neither heat nor cold. Even his beard had not grown. He stretched his legs, touching the floor with his hands. A soft whirring made him look up, but he had missed it. This new table was higher, with a new box and a beehive-shaped clay vessel on top.
Cheftu ate some fish, still warm, and an olive-and-wild-lettuce salad while he paced the chamber, easing the ache of his muscles and allowing the tension of the past decans? days? to pass through his body.
He rinsed his fingers, then rubbed and massaged his neck as he prepared to go into what he hoped was the final pyramid test. This must be the quest to transform.
Transform what? Into what? Mon Dieu, be with me.
After staring at the beehive for a decan or so, it came to him. The clay beehive was an oven! He’d seen a picture, a picture in his own time, of one. Intéressant. Also, there was a bowl, a lump of dark rock, three or four vials of liquids, a box of dried herbs, and a gold ingot.
Ovens and gold, ovens and gold. Cheftu gnawed his upper lip as he searched through his memories. The oven was an athanor, the container in which an alchemist heated his lead, creating gold. Transforming the everyday into the sacred.
Transforming. Surely Aztlantu couldn’t change lead to gold even in this mythological land? He turned over the dark rocks in his hands. Not lead; lead had not yet been discovered. Transform … transform through heat. He opened the vials. Chemicals and herbs?
He’d read that alchemists in imperial France believed each object carried within itself the ability to develop, to metamorphose into that which was beautiful, powerful, and useful. Each man and woman had the same ability. The art of alchemy was not just knowing the properties and reactions of liquids and solids, but the art of refining the coarse into the perfected.
It was the ultimate search: to sift and modify until godhood was achieved. Alchemists claimed it was a spiritual quest, the refining, the most perfecting skill of all.
How? he thought, staring at the oven, the vials, and the rocks. These skills, if they were known in Egypt, had not been part of his education. Cheftu felt cold, sick, and panicked.
How much time had passed? Did they know he was stymied? Running his hands through his sweat-soaked hair, Cheftu fought for calm. God, there is nothing I can do. I know nothing here. Please, help me.
Trust me….
The voice was solid and reassuring. Cheftu took deep, calming breaths, then returned to the table. Chemicals and heat interacted. Order was significant here. He sniffed each vial, forcing the scent to recall its name and properties, how it
could be used, and for what.
His mind narrowed to a nib of intense concentration, Cheftu leaned on his instincts and tried to transform fear into faith. He began mixing and measuring.
The stench of the athanor was repellent after a while, and his eyes ran with tears as he fought for breath. There was no way out of the room, and he wondered if asphyxiation were the price of failure in this exam. The room shook slightly, another earthwave, Cheftu assumed, but when he opened his eyes again, he saw an obsidian sarcophagus.
Not only am I killing myself, I’m to bury my corpse also?
As it heated, the athanor was taking the air Cheftu needed into its red-hot body, spewing out poison. Cheftu stripped off his clothes and walked to the sarcophagus. It was cool to the touch, deep and curved to fit the shape of a man’s body.
Dizziness assaulted him, and Cheftu knew he had only a few minutes of consciousness. Once, in the initiation of Amun, he had learned how to send his spirit away, slow his body down to the sleep of death. Could he do it again? Place himself in an attitude of stasis?
Tired muscles screaming, he pulled himself over the edge and into the depths of the sarcophagus. Lying down, he breathed deeply. Please, God, please. He could not see above the edges of the sarcophagus. Closing his eyes, Cheftu steadied his racing pulse, counting and resting, slowing his body. A whirring noise touched his ears, but he refused to splinter his attention. He felt his body gaining weight, growing heavy and slow.
It was similar to the sensation of moving through time, when his body had first slipped off him, like a heavy coat, and he had sailed naked both soul and body through … Cheftu’s mind ceased to process, and he rested, above his body, above the room, above the pyramid, above Aztlan.
THE COUNCIL WANDERED AROUND the chamber, eating and drinking, glancing at the serfs, who would run to check the sky and report back.
The new Spiralmaster was running out of time.
Chloe’s fingers were like ice around her rhyton, and she’d already bored Dion and Vena to death when they’d tried to engage her in conversation. Come on, Cheftu! Think! Work! Do what it takes! The sands are running down!
Selena had mentioned, obviously aware that Sibylla was very interested, that Phoebus and Niko were in the Rising Golden’s apartments, preparing to celebrate when Zelos went to kill the failed Spiralmaster.
These people take competition way too seriously, Chloe thought. Come on, Cheftu!
CHEFTU WOKE WITH A JOLT—his body cold as snow, the sarcophagus sealed. With a great gasp, he breathed. The stench of the athanor filled his nose and he coughed, staring up at the black lid across his lower body. He was immobile. He forced his fingers to move, pumping blood back into the digits. He ran a shaky hand over his face—once again his beard had not grown. Easing up, he leaned against one side of the sarcophagus. It was lighter in the room, lighter than it had been when he had fallen “asleep.”
Muscles shaking, heart pounding, he crawled over the side of the sarcophagus. Cheftu leaned against it in shock. Before him on the table stood a lump of shalcedon. It was the size of the athanor; indeed it was the athanor. This was how the Aztlantu built the pyramid, he realized. They made faux jewels from ordinary stone through al-khem and heat. Their incredible wealth of precious stones was nothing more than a facade! Cheftu walked over the shalcedon, touching the still warm stone. He scratched it with his nails.
Grâce à Dieu!
The shalcedon was smooth, lumpy only from the ridges on the clay base. Cheftu tried to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. Remembering the last thing Dion had told him, Cheftu ritually baptized the stone with a quick slice to his wrist. He hadn’t died in the testing; still, some blood was demanded.
The floor fell away from beneath him and he went down in a wild slide, swallowing his screams. He shot out into a pool, beneath the fading blue sky. Water closed over his head and he came up sputtering and stared in surprise at the Council members in the room. They stared back, equally surprised. Chloe’s face was white, her eyes as wide and green as the shalcedon.
Had he succeeded, then?
Zelos reached out his hands, hauled Cheftu from the pool. “Welcome to the Council and to Aztlan, Spiralmaster Cheftu!”
Cheftu’s first official duty was to go to the deathbed of one of Zelos’ hequetai. The man was young, only a few summers Cheftu’s senior, yet he moved as though he were decades older. His babbling and hysterical laughter terrified his wife. Tears of fear streaming down her face, she refused to be in the same room with him. Already the serfs had placed him in the lustral bath.
Cheftu was there when he began his journey. Despite the power, position, and wealth the dying man possessed, none of his friends or family dared get close to him, fearing the illness. Afterward, in his library, Cheftu looked through the notes Imhotep had dictated. A scribe had been the former Spiralmaster’s constant companion, taking down every word as though it were holy writ.
Unlike illness brought on by ukhedu, the body was not fighting this sickness. The lack of immune reaction—no fever, no sweating, no vomiting—was the most puzzling element. Later that night, as Chloe lay in his arms pillowed on his chest, he explained the fear that was growing around the illness about the lack of symptoms.
“It’s completely fatal?” she asked.
“Aye. No one has recovered, or survived.”
“Did the victims have anything in common?”
“All were part of Zelos’ cabinet.”
She was silent, her fingers beating out a rhythm on his stomach. “A germ, maybe?”
Cheftu listened as she explained the tiny animals that could inhabit one’s body through improperly cooked food, a dormant illness, or even the air. “These germs make you cough and sneeze and run fevers, you say?”
“Aye. The common cold is everywhere. It’s a real peach to land a cold account ‘cause cold, fever, and sniffle relief is responsible for half the advertising in the U.S.”
He eyed her warily, then spoke. “There is no fever. If this illness was something from outside the body, the body’s defenses would react.”
“So do an autopsy, see if the insides of the body tell you anything.’
“A what?”
She sat up, her face animated in the lamp’s light, her hair mussed and falling over her shoulders, tangling with his. Cheftu felt a surge in his groin as he watched her. “In murder mysteries they always do an autopsy when someone dies and no one knows why. Could this be poison?”
“I am fairly proficient at identifying poisons, but I will inquire. Perhaps they have one here that is unknown to me. Though I wager Imhotep would have recognized it long before.”
“Just so,” she said, staring at the designs painted on the wall behind him. “Look at that design. It starts out as a square, then turns into a diamond, then bends into that star shape, and then fills out into a circle. An example of Bronze Age morphing,” she said, smiling.
He rolled over, pulling her beneath him, sliding inside the tightness of her body. He felt her stiffen and then accept him, her mouth and hands as hungry and seeking as his own. “You are morphing from medicine man to macho man,” she whispered between kisses.
He gave himself over to sensation, the silk of her skin, her taste, her feel … and reminded himself to have her explain “morphing” later.
“I CAN DO NO MORE, MY FRIEND,” Phoebus said.
Niko clenched his fists, and Phoebus watched the one-handed girl Neotne duck her head in sympathy. “If the Rising Golden is helpless, then I am resigned also,” Niko said slowly.
“Cheftu passed the tests. He poured the stone, shaped the rock, he even transformed and survived.”
“I could have passed them also, Phoebus,”
“Niko …” Phoebus swallowed; this would be hard to say. “Spiral-master had many summers to name you his inheritor. He chose not to, in all that time. He’d been sick for a while, and still he said nothing.
Niko’s white skin flushed. “You say that Spiralmaster intended this
all along?”
Phoebus shrugged; the facts spoke for themselves. Niko, his closest and dearest friend, turned his back on Phoebus. For the first time in his life, Phoebus was being dismissed. He saluted Neotne and left, walking down the long hallways to his own apartments.
“How did he receive your thoughts?” Dion asked, joining him as he crossed one of the large rooms.
“How would you receive them? Niko never mentioned his aspirations. I didn’t know he wanted to be the Spiralmaster.”
“I think he just assumed he would be. Not an aspiration as such, just an understanding.”
“Apparently Spiralmaster did not have this understanding.”
The two men walked in silence. “Speaking of the Spiralmaster, Cheftu approached me on two counts.”
“What does the interloper want?”
Dion laid a hand on Phoebus’ arm. “Zelos himself has welcomed him. He was tested by the most trying tasks. Spiralmaster instantly saw something in him that gave him trust in the man. Do you not think you could learn to—”
“He is a usurper,” Phoebus ground out. “No better than Ileana.”
“You are wrong, Phoebus.” Dion’s voice was implacable.
Phoebus sighed. “I want no more conflict today. Niko …”
“He holds you accountable?”
Phoebus shrugged, looking away. “What does Cheftu want?”
Dion refrained from commenting on Phoebus’ deliberate rudeness. “He wants Nestor to work at his side….”
“He is my inheritor! Until Kela-Ileana is full with child, at any rate.”
“Aye, but how would training with Spiralmaster Cheftu interfere with his position? He would still devote most of his time to you.”
Shadows on the Aegean Page 30
