Copyright © 2015 Mary R. Woldering
All rights reserved
ISBN: 1508731292
ISBN 13: 9781508731290
To my parents and my family, who nurtured my creative soul.
To my son Thom,
for being my editor and and formatter for this volume.
To Annette Taylor -
first with me on my journey,
without whom this story would never have been told.
Author’s Note
To all of you returning to this series after reading Book 1 of the Children of Stone, thank you for returning, and to those of you starting the series now – welcome! This story work of historical fiction is set in the time period around 2500 B.C. in the areas surrounding what is currently Egypt and the Middle East. As such, I have used many proper names for places and peoples in this story which are believed to have been used historically. A glossary is included with this novel to explain the locations visited and terminology used throughout the book. I sincerely hope that you enjoy the story that I have prepared for you in the pages to come, and that the extra material provided allows you to better understand the historical setting in which this novel takes place. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
PART ONE: DRIFTING AWAY
CHAPTER 1: THINGS FALL APART
CHAPTER 2: LAMENTATIONS OF THE SPIRIT
CHAPTER 3: TWO PRINCES
CHAPTER 4: THE ARRANGEMENT
CHAPTER 5: THE CHOICE
CHAPTER 6: A MYSTERIOUS GRANDSON
CHAPTER 7: NAIBE’S CHARM
CHAPTER 8: VISIONS AND MEMORIES
CHAPTER 9: “A CURSE BE ON YOUR HOUSES!”
CHAPTER 10: HIS SPELL
CHAPTER 11: A ROYAL CONCUBINE
PART TWO: LOOKING BACK
CHAPTER 12: GOING FORTH
CHAPTER 13: THE UNEXPECTED
CHAPTER 14: THE VEIL
CHAPTER 15: A PRIEST AT YOUR ALTAR
CHAPTER 16: THIS ENDS
CHAPTER 17: NO ORDINARY MAN
CHAPTER 18: THE SACRED COW
CHAPTER 19: LILITU
CHAPTER 20: ARIENNU AND THE KING
CHAPTER 21: NAIBE BROWN EYES
CHAPTER 22: BAKHA MONTU
PART 3: SENDING FORTH
CHAPTER 23: THE WDJAT
CHAPTER 24: PREPARATIONS AND DISCOVERIES
CHAPTER 25: ARRIVALS
CHAPTER 26: THE DANCE
CHAPTER 27: THE COMPETITION
CHAPTER 28: THEFT AND SHADOW
CHAPTER 29: CROSSING AT NIGHT
CHAPTER 30: IMAGE IN THE WATER
GLOSSARY
PART ONE: DRIFTING AWAY
CHAPTER 1: THINGS FALL APART
Ariennu worried about Marai. Each evening of the first sixteen days he had visited with the priests across the river, the tall, silver-haired man had whispered very lovingly into her thoughts. When Ariennu sensed his thoughts, she always told her sister-wives Deka and Naibe-Ellit that Marai had done well that day. ‘Everything in his training is going well’, she told them, feeling it her duty as the eldest wife to share Marai’s messages with them. At various moments throughout the day and evening they sensed their half-giant companion smiling wistfully across space and time as his daily missives were whispered into their hearts. Ariennu had become used to those sweet little nudges from the spirit world. All was well with her beloved Marai. Soon, the caring soul of the former shepherd had insisted, he would be finished with his training. After that, she, Deka, and pretty Naibe-Ellit would be received at his new teacher’s home in grand style. Their reunion would be attended by high priests and by the royalty of Kemet. Marai had not contacted Ariennu in six days. Where has he gone? What has happened to him? she thought over and over again at the silence.
Twenty-two days had come and gone since Marai had embraced his russet-haired elder wife on the upper porch landing outside their home in Little Kina-Ahna. To Ariennu, they seemed like ages. Before that early morning, the four of them had shared a wonderful year of simple life and hard work selling spice and herbal medicines in this bustling village of sojourners. Wanderers and foreigners from Shinar, Sanghir, Kina-Ahna and any number of lands along the infamous Copper Road by the great Green Sea had settled in this sprawling village which lay across the Great River Asar from the City of the White Wall. The king and the royalty lived, worshipped, and built their monuments on the other side. Life had been sweeter in this humble village than in any other place Ariennu had ever known. This morning, as the russet-haired woman drew the day’s water from the well in the courtyard below their home, she worried how much longer she could stand Marai’s silence. To keep Deka and Naibe-Ellit from being too concerned, she had lied. Soon, one of them would undoubtedly ask her for more about what Marai had said. She knew she would falter. I have to keep us together until his silence passes! she told herself.
“Deka!” Ariennu called up to the large empty window where the dark-skinned woman usually sat observing the neighborhood below. “Deka! Stick your head out here so you can hear me! You gone deaf again?” the elder wife teased.
Beyond the window, Deka tidied the bedding in their apartment so it would look fresh just in case today was the day Marai returned to get them. The woman of Ta-Seti had the feeling something very important would happen today. She looked out of the window for a minute, then gestured madly to Ariennu’s expectant, upturned face. She had tried to clean quietly around the young Naibe-Ellit, who never rose easily in the morning. Today, the youngest of Marai’s wives had been especially difficult to rouse. Looking back at Ariennu, Deka wiped her eyes as if she had been crying, then pointed at the floor inside of their window.
Ariennu suspected the sign meant that Naibe had slept poorly. The youngest woman’s nightmares were fairly regular now, like a child’s nightly fear of monsters. They were always about a storm coming, or about her getting hopelessly separated from Marai. Ariennu’s shoulders sagged at the thought of the little one’s dreams. She knew she couldn’t let the other women know of her worry or the lack of contact from Marai.
Ari had always been the secret keeper in their band of four sojourners who had come out of the wilderness a little over a year earlier. If some word or act needed to be hidden, she had been given the talent to wrap images of rainbows and opacity around it. The cover she wove was so deep that no outsider would ever know what she had chosen to hide. Only young Naibe knew ways into her secrets and Ari didn’t want her reading them today.
In his last message to his senior wife, Marai said he would be taking his final trial soon. He had seemed a little weak or tired, but Ari believed him when he said he was at peace. He had assured her that Great Count Prince Hordjedtef, who was mentoring him through the mysterious “Way of Life”, had turned out to be quite an excellent and challenging teacher. Nothing in Marai’s messages led Ariennu or any of the women to believe something could go wrong. Nevertheless, early this morning, Ariennu had been startled awake by a dream of Marai standing by her bed in their upper apartment room. His shadowy form bent to touch her; to trace his finger across her shoulder the way he had before he left. His ghostly apparition seemed so sad and so full of regret, but Ariennu had thought nothing further of it, until now. When Deka revealed that Naibe had been crying, the older woman realized that the dream must have been a visitation. Oh, Marai, what have you gotten yourself into? she worried again.
With each passing day of silence, Ariennu felt that the comfortable life into which the four of them had settled was coming apart. While Marai studied across the river, his three wives had continued to work for Etum Addi, the grizzly and jolly Sanghir spice merchant Marai had met when they had first arrived in Little Kina-Ahna.
Etum Addi was a man of thirty-five, b
ut like most men of that age and unlike the similarly-aged, star-blessed Marai, he was beginning to slow down and put on weight. For several years since his arrival in Little Kina-Ahna, the Sanghir had imported and sold cinnabar and cedar bark incense from Ra-Kedet on the shore of the Great Green Sea. Even though he had succeeded in raising his family and had been able to take ownership of a brick two-story building in addition to his own home, he had suffered equal downturns in business. When Marai and the women arrived and offered to sell spices and date candy alongside the merchant in exchange for lodging in the upper floor of the two-story building he owned, Etum Addi felt good fortune return. He no longer struggled to keep up his annual tribute offerings to the king.
Gradually, as the days of Marai’s absence went on, Etum Addi realized that Marai wasn’t likely to return. The Sanghir had known from the first day he met Marai and his three “wives” that former shepherd intended to study with the priesthood if he could get an appointment and that the women would join him soon after. He had hoped this ‘Akkad Giant’, as most in the market knew him, would settle down in Little Kina-Ahna instead and continue their comfortable arrangement. When he returned from a three week journey to Ra-Kedet for more trade goods, Etum Addi found Marai was still missing. He solemnly began to talk of leaving Little Kina-Ahna and the area of Ineb Hedj altogether. Ariennu had heard these plans, where the merchant would sell everything he held in Little Kina-Ahna and move his whole family to the more profitable Ra-Kedet, and wondered if it would be sooner than Marai’s return.
Ariennu contemplated the pink and grey dawn. Quietly balancing the water jar on her head, she had teetered down the pale brick steps outside her apartment to the first level of their building. Etum Addi’s wife, Gizzi, was already at the well. Soon, Gizzi’s daughter Kieri had come out with her jar. Gradually, the women from Djerah’s clan, had come out as well. Some of the women from outlying neighborhoods had joined them too. They preferred the water from this well because it was locked and strained at intervals, making it less stagnant than the river water. As they each drew water, they had laughed and gossiped quietly so no elders or babies would wake. The light gossip made the elder wife almost forget about Marai’s lack of contact, about the Children of Stone from beyond the stars who had changed her, and about the many good and bad years she had lived before her own Child Stone had been placed within her brow.
Trying to shake the strange feeling that a change was coming, Ariennu turned to chat with the other women again about the weather, the coming festivals of Ptah, and what both events might mean for business. Then, just as Ariennu placed her filled water jar on her head, she saw the inspector priest who had visited the four of them three weeks earlier. She could have sworn that he had not been there a moment before, but now he was present in his dark indigo-dyed cloak that flashed with the deep purple color of good amethyst. Four peacekeepers accompanied the inspector as he approached the well. From the little Ariennu could see of the indigo-cloaked man’s flat expression, she knew his thoughts were mercilessly tucked into secrecy. The other women at the well melted back in to their homes without even taking their water. They remembered the last time this man showed up. Strange things had happened, the women of Djerah’s family had told them, and the following day the big silvery-haired giant man who had reinvented their happy neighborhood was gone. Whatever change this priestly man might have brought with him, the other women of the neighborhood wanted no part of it.
“May peace be with you this early day,” the slim man in the dark cloak greeted the elder wife. He looked up the stairs to the cloth draped door of the upstairs apartment that the three women shared. “Are your sisters still asleep?”
Ariennu felt a vortex of terror begin to spin and suck in the back of her head with the sound of the man’s words. A freezing sensation crept over her heart that quickly became a clammy, sinking sickness that made the world at the well dissolve into blurs. “Something’s wrong isn’t it?” she almost stammered, “Something’s happened to Marai.”
‘The priest looked down at her remark, carefully hiding any kind of expression change. Ariennu couldn’t tell if he agreed or disagreed with her. When he looked up again, his face was even harder to read than before.
“It is time for your audience with The Great One of Five,” the inspector’s voice remained quiet and even. “The tests have been completed and, as promised, we have come for you and for the carved box the man Marai has left in your safekeeping,” he folded his hands for a moment as he waited for Ariennu’s response. When she returned only a dumbfounded stare, he spoke again. “If you could hurry and pack your things, we might cross the Asar and take care of this matter quickly.”
Ariennu looked deeper into his dark eyes, in a vague attempt to wrench out a secret, but met nothing beyond his purposely bland face. The man, known only to Ari as “The Inspector Priest”, sensed her thoughts prying into his own and countered by slipping his hand up to touch the troublesome amulet that had been hidden in the folds of his travel cloak the last time he visited Little Kina-Ahna. Today, he wore the amulet proudly. This round, glittering crystal disc peeked out from under the priest’s beaded pectoral, as if he dared her or any random thief to take it. The elder wife lowered her eyes a little, almost worried that he would use the jewel to generate another spell if she looked directly at it. Putting on her best face, Ariennu haltingly replied to the inspector. “I see. I’ll get the others,” she set the full jar down by the well, then broke into a run toward the steps up to her apartment. “Deka! Naibe! Get Up! Get Up! It’s time! He’s here!” she cried out in her native Kina-Ankht language as she clambered up the worn sun-brick steps. Deka poked her head out of the door as Ariennu came in, then turned to see the elder wife go straight to her basket of things. She dug deep in the stack of folded cloth shifts and drew out a pretty carved box. When she took a quick look, she saw all the unearthly Children of Stone still tucked safely inside. Is it really time? Will we see Marai today? Her thoughts sighed out to them as the Children of Stone glimmered a hushed response.
They have come.
Take all here but eight
You will choose
Take those apart from the others.
Remember how to live
It is time.
Remember, Remember Wise One
How to live!
Ariennu didn’t like the way the Children’s message sounded at all. Grimly, she slapped the box shut.
“Is it time?” Naibe sat up suddenly, no longer slow and sleepy. “Did Marai speak to you in the night? Did he tell you something?” She quickly fastened her shift and patted her braided loops of hair, lamenting for a moment that they had become scrambled badly as she slept.
“The priest who came to us before has come back.” Deka replied, then stuck her head out of the window. In a moment she turned back into the apartment. “This time he’s come with men!”
Naibe didn’t need to read the horror in the dark woman’s expression to understand how she felt.
Before she could cry out in distress, Ariennu sighed and slid down the wall with the box of stones in her hands. “I saw Marai in a dream last night. Maybe I just felt him reaching for us,” she sat and briefly shut her eyes. She opened the box one more time, sending her thoughts through her hands and into the stones. Is everything alright? Once again, the Children pulsed faintly in recognition.
Truth waits for all
There we must go
The ones who do not know us
Must not touch the eight
That see…
Keep these safe
Keep these hidden
The chorused voices of the Stone Children hushed through Ari’s heart.
“We have to go to Marai now. The men are taking us to him,” Ariennu lied with a winsome smile. “The inspector said to take our things. That’s what the men are there for – to help us carry them to a boat I guess,” she grinned, “isn’t that nice of him?” Rising quickly, she set the box down and went to the door again
. When she poked her head out, she saw the inspector and the men milling about in the courtyard below. One of the peacekeepers was halfway up the steps and another was at the foot of them. Ari knew the men outside had been commenting about all of the women’s frantic sorting as they packed their belongings.
“We’re dressing. We’ll be ready soon! Just give us some space!” Ari called to the men. She hoped Naibe or Deka would not sense how uneasy the inspector’s sudden appearance had made her. Concentrating, she tucked all of her misgivings into a silence so deep that even Naibe would not be able to see it and then drew her head back in.
“Marai’s teacher told this man to get us and to have us bring the Children of Stone now! It’s time!” Ariennu paced around in the middle of the floor as Deka and Naibe frantically dressed and applied some light cosmetics.
Without any further words, they hurriedly fastened each other’s hair then rolled their belongings and fastened the baskets. While the other women worked, Ariennu scuttled off into the corner with her back turned to them, opened the Children of Stone’s box, sorted out the first eight stones that glimmered a little more brightly than the others, and then quickly closed it again. She didn’t understand why the voices called for eight stones to be separated, but thought the glimmer may have been the Children’s way of telling her which stones to take. She strapped a braided leather belt around the box to keep it fastened, then found a slim, purse-like leather bag among her things. Ariennu quickly emptied the emergency sewing tools it held into a larger basket and put the eight stones she held into the bag instead. Then, she handed the box to Naibe-Ellit to hide in the bottom of one of the baskets. Dressing quickly, Ariennu, dropped her wide work apron around her ankles, stepped out of it, and changed into a better kalasaris shift. Quietly, when the other women were occupied with more packing, she flattened the bag with the eight stones under the skirt and bound it securely to her midriff with a large sash. Now the stones would be well protected and separate from the women’s other belongings.
Going Forth By Day Page 1
