After some time, she felt dragged back out of her darkening reverie by something. Is it the king? she asked herself. He had looked at her more than steadily, approving of her movements. She didn’t want King Menkaure the Great to choose her tonight even though she knew there could be a chance of it. For generations, the kings of Kemet had chosen at least one Ta-Seti wife or given them status as a high-ranking concubine. The land of Ta-Seti was the source of women’s wisdom and the birthplace of the woman-gods. These women taught the kings and princes, insuring their knowledge and respect remained in the right place. All of the king’s wives thus far had been lighter-skinned Tjemehu, if they were not of Kemet ancestry. The thought made her heart flutterer nervously until she told herself: Of course, a god of men would desire a god among gods. Calmer, she looked at the king. Is it you I sense?
The king remained seated in his ebony wood chair, though, seemingly unmoved by any of the women. Feeling emboldened by the thought that the king might choose her, Deka tried to sense his thoughts. She discovered they were leagues away from this quickly thrown together private dinner party. Tonight, he was seated as a man and not as a god or even as a king. He looked a little tired as he presided over this wry and somewhat sordid entertainment, and seemed much more interested in sipping the mulled honey wine from his cup. The weight of his kingdom and his life as a god had suddenly become too heavy. Something else troubled him, but Deka couldn’t sense what it was.
Next, the dark-skinned woman regarded the inspector-priest, the king’s vizier, and the high priest in dismay, hoping that the inspector had not lied about their desire to choose a woman tonight. Any of those three men choosing her would be unbearable to her after everything they had put upon her today. Seeking their intent without probing them enough to be noticed, Deka felt no focus upon herself from them. Relieved that it wasn’t she continued to wonder who it possibly could be. Someone else was watching her, and they were watching her in the same pointed manner as a predator stalking its prey.
She saw a man move forward into the light of the dozen or so strategically placed torch stands. This is someone new, Deka thought. He must have gone into another room to refresh his cup or to relieve himself before we came in. He was younger than the other men. If the crown prince was about thirty years of age, this man was likely under the age of twenty-five. His color was darker than the other men’s skin, but slightly lighter than her color. He was average height for a Kemet man. His broad, heavily-muscled chest tapered to a small, hard waist and flat belly. His massive arms, fit with a showy and glittering collection of golden jewelry, were undeniably powerful. Emerging below his flawlessly pleated shendyt kilt were even fitter and mightier looking legs. His face… she shook her head in dizzy disbelief. Marai, her Man-Sun, had a beautiful, calm, and loving face. This man’s face was lovely too, but severe. Its expression spoke of a cold but sensual and arrogant rage that bubbled beneath its surface. An animalistic wildness that seemed a part of him as his own skin lurked in his expression. Who is this man? It must be him watching me.
After Deka saw the young man make a quick salute to the king, she saw him slump into a vacant wicker chair near the high priest’s dais. With a spoiled and petulant sulk, the young man studied the graceful movements she was making. He briefly glanced at Naibe, who still wandered near the pool, then snapped his eyes back to her. Suddenly, the he sat forward, pointed directly at Deka and beckoned for her to come closer to him.
Something… she thought, but calmly and almost involuntarily felt the need to move in his direction. He knows something… Deka rose from her seat on the floor. She moved, demurely at first, toward the young man. With a turn to the side, she stretched her slim arms high above her head to display her shining henna-patterned breasts and torso.
As she moved and turned, she felt a kind of warm tremor begin to course through her chest and out to the flanks of her arms as if the young prince had sent a thing that seeks and steals energy through her body. A spell? she began to tense and defend herself, but just as suddenly she found all desire to fight the feeling inside her had fled.
Deka’s hands spiraled up into shadowy dance movements, mimicking her dance that had started everything those many months ago. She had felt the memory of it and had shown it to the young sesh-priest from the house of Djehut because she recognized their common ancestry. With a graceful twirl, she brought herself near the two priests and then stood directly in front of the young man who had motioned for her. She hovered over him briefly and, suddenly and eerily confident, grinned down at him. The energy pulse she felt in her arms ran quickly back into her heart and out of her chest toward him, its seeking done.
The man cocked his half-nemes-draped head to one side; a slow, amused smile dotting his full and pouty lips. Deka recognized that same cautious half-smirk under those glittering, but watchful eyes; she had seen it in the older priest’s eyes this morning. She knew this man was the missing grandson and esteemed general that the inspector had announced earlier that evening.
Something else in the man’s his eyes begged her to take an even closer look into them. The eyes of most people she knew were a deep variant of black or brown. The exception was Marai, whose eyes bore a silvery overcast to their natural black color. Her own eyes were a dark olive color once, but the Children of Stone had given them a cat-like green-gold overtone when they remade her. They had given Ariennu’s eyes a black starriness and Naibe’s light brown eyes a delicious golden flash that filled them with goddess stars. This man’s eyes were a rich combined light brown, golden and green color almost like her eyes in certain lights. That they already seemed enhanced by something not entirely human, just as hers, quietly tugged at her memory. Is he one of us? her thoughts asked, but the Child Stone in her brow remained silent.
Ta-Seti… I like… his sultry and melodious voice had a kind of growling, rusty catch to it. He spoke to Deka in the language of the upper lands and beyond. She froze, hands raised, unable to move them any further when she heard his low and salty voice whisper to her; his face had not moved. Without a blink or a change in expression, the man had whispered directly into her thoughts. Will you dance the rain and wind? I know you, woman… I know you inside. I know what you like, he pushed his thoughts at her again as they reverberated in her heart, descending in meter, volume, and pitch. In a way, his inner voice spoke to hers the same way she, Ariennu and Naibe spoke to each other before the Children of Stone restored Ariennu’s hearing, her speech, and Naibe’s intelligence. He spoke to her heart the same way Marai used to speak to them all and the same way the Children of Stone spoke to them too.
Wrapped up in his words an instant spell came forth. His hands, ringed and immaculately groomed, caressed the air briefly. They imitated her gestures as if he knew the answer to the question her dance asked. She began to weave her hands in the unknown question again, approaching closer, but he leapt to his feet and seized one of her hands firmly as she drew near. He twirled her under one arm, nodding at the old priest’s pleased expression. The face of the inspector, however, darkened in appalled concern over the younger man’s actions.
Deka gasped a little. Will you dance the rain and wind? Had he really said that? Wind and rain like a storm. Dance until the wind circles up. Laugh and run back and forth deep in madness until the rains come. Does he known about the rain? she wondered. He unlocks something! Is he one of us? she asked herself again. How can he see my heart the way Naibe did when we were on the way to Kemet so long ago if he is not one of us?
Naibe had quite innocently blurted out, over a year before this day, that she thought Deka must have been the plaything of a god who had dropped her, bent and broken, to the earth when he had tired of her. The youngest of the three women had intended for her revelation to be a good-hearted tease designed to impress her sister in kind with her newfound ability to draw out secrets. She had no idea until it was too late, that her gentle wit had come far too close to the truth.
Golden-eyed Naibe had never owned more than
one undimmed wit before she had been changed into a young goddess by the Children of Stone. She had been a drooling idiot with a heart-sickening sexual madness. That Naibe was the one to uncover the truth before Deka herself could learn it, hurt rather than delighted the Ta-Seti woman. Something so angry and wild-hearted inside her had risen up to strike back at her instead of thanking her. To punish the young woman, Deka created a pathway to the night terrors which had begun to plague Naibe-Ellit that night and still bothered her to this day.
Shall I punish you for this? she wordlessly asked the prince, for daring to say you know me?
“No, you shouldn’t,” he replied aloud and then whispered almost gently, lifting her hand to his lips: “but you should come with me, for a walk.” The younger prince tugged at Deka’s hand and she stumbled a little closer into his semi-embrace. Catching her, he nipped at her ear a little and then turned to look at the elder priest. “Why thank you, Grandfather… A Ta-Seti ka’t, too! You know I like them so much,” his gruff chortle echoed throughout the open plaza.
The king winced ever so slightly at this outburst, then with a tired, annoyed sigh he gulped at his cup of wine.
“See. This one’s a stray out of old Akaru-Sef’s house, I’ll bet,” the young prince continued. Taking a now startled Deka by the chin, he turned her head to one side so the men could see the swept-back line of her brow. “Look at that profile! The old lion tamer’s been holding out on me. Been hiding a granddaughter from me down here! She’ll be just what I need for my journey next moon, if she’s a decent piece at all,” he grinned in increasing excitement.
“I was just thinking…” he turned to the king with an almost audible chuckle, saluting and bowing. “If I may take my leave, Excellent Majesty and Father God…” he looked up slightly enough to catch the king’s expression of irritation, then lowered his eyes again humbly. He then sent a thought to the high priest so clearly that Deka sensed it and started to shake a little. Until the end of her days, she wasn’t certain if at that moment she felt fear, rage, delight, or a strange combination of the three emotions. You watch me, grandfather, while I solve all the problems here. You know I can. With his head still bowed as if to receive the king’s blessing, he spoke aloud: “I’ve had a delightful evening. I would stay, but I was thinking of showing this one my boat tonight, now that we’ve met… to get better acquainted.” He emphasized the word “boat” and then paused, suddenly sniffing at the air like some odd sort of hunting hound finding a scent. After a moment, he tilted his head down, looking, fully human again. “Hmph! Might even rain a little drop or two, I see,” the younger prince stared into Deka’s green-brown eyes and then spoke into her thoughts. Wind and rain, eh? You doing this for me, eh? Wind and rain, it is, then. Remaining bowed until the king nodded absent-mindedly to dismiss him, the young prince half-dragged Deka toward the cedar entry gate in the high white wall that surrounded Hordjedtef’s noble plaza.
Across the plaza, Ariennu stopped caressing the crown prince, long enough to notice that Deka hadn’t resisted the younger prince in any sort of way. When she heard this tardy young general’s boldness and salty wit, she maneuvered the crown prince in her arms so that she could see the spectacle. The man certainly has some kind of nerve to be so rude in front of the king, she thought. She knew the man was communicating with Deka in the Ta-Seti tongue both with and without words. Try as she might, she couldn’t understand the language. What the man had said aloud to his king about what he intended to do with Deka, however, was perfectly clear.
“Oooo-eee,” The elder vizier, giggled like an old woman, pacing back and forth on the edge of Hordjedtef’s marble stepped dais to still his own merriment. It was clear that everyone else in the plaza also understood the young prince’s intent.
Boat, eh? No pretty manners or even a hint of respect there, I see. Ariennu nearly burst in laughter as the continued to think about the comment. And him bragging like that. Show her a boat – other words for quick and hard gash – any language. Deka knows that. Should have set her on fire.
Ariennu wondered if the Ta-Seti woman was completely drunk or stupefied by the wine and the intoxicating incense the serving women had provided all afternoon. Deka had been drinking quite a lot of it, Ariennu recalled. Maybe she thought the drink would help her “fly away” from this man. Maybe she sensed something she liked. Whatever it was, it merited Ari’s attention. She rolled to one side in the Crown prince’s arms so she could slyly study the young general for a moment. At once her heart began to pound.
Whoa, goddess! That is so not fair. Not fair at all! her thoughts exclaimed when she saw the prince’s muscles glisten and ripple as he tucked Deka under his arm. Her eyes traced the line of his lower back, around the tight curve of his linen-shrouded buttocks, and then lost themselves in a fantasy of what she expected to find if she had reached to the front of his loin.
The young prince paused, sensing her reaction. Raising one slanted eyebrow, he returned a thought to her. Oh, I see. You don’t fret, Red Sister. You can have some too… in time. After that, the young man jerked Deka to his side. He smiled and stared deeply into her eyes. A moment later, she straightened, stood aloof and calm, smoothed her skirt, and walked straight from the plaza with him. As they walked, he towed her by the hand as if she were a naughty child, or a dog on a leash.
“Does something trouble you still, my pretty one?” The prince in her own arms paused, taking notice and thinking she was upset about her departed husband again.
“Sorry, Your Highness,” Ariennu spun a lie that was filled with half-truths designed to inspire the crown prince’s confidence. “You are my savior from this tragedy, but my sisters and I have not often been apart since we were thrown together years ago. Is he?” she began, betraying that she was a little anxious. That younger prince looked so strong and outrageously willful. She knew without even trying to read him that he was the kind of man who could kill coldly and without passion. It was a suitable trait in a general or a warrior. The prince in her arms didn’t have the same personality at all. He was polite and seemed caring, even gentle and sympathetic to the thought that her heart might be broken. By contrast, she could sense that the younger prince could easily get pain and pleasure so braided together that they became the same thing. N’ahab-Atall, her longtime lover from Tyre who had followed her into the wilderness, where he became more like her owner, had been like that. When she was young, it had been vicious and evil men who made her weak in the knees. As she aged, their demanding greed and willful disrespect made her loathe the same kind of man. This young prince was no lost boy like N’ahab had been. This one had wealth, sumptuousness, title, power, a pretty face and form, and all of it all topped with the ability speak to her heart the way Marai and the Children of Stone could speak to it. The entire package made her ache so fiercely that the crown prince noticed.
“How caring and sympathy-filled you are…” the older prince patted Ari’s arm. “Prince Maatkare Raemkai is a powerful young man, beloved by the troops he commands in the Southern region. Your sister could do well by him,” he blinked calmly, distracting Ariennu by beginning to unfasten some of the pins and hinges in her hair so that it flowed brightly into his hand. “Such a pretty color hair on you, not wretched as it is on a man.”
Ariennu sensed this crown prince had carefully guarded everything he said about the younger prince. His words felt tinged with sarcasm. Whether brother, cousin, or nothing, princes, as Ari had learned through listening to storefront gossip in her year as a merchant in Little Kina Ahna, considered each other as rivals. They often plotted against each other and even considered killing any contender for the crown. Maybe the sensation she felt between king, crown prince and this younger prince was nothing more than such a display of rivalry. It was too late to think about that now, though. Ariennu knew she needed to keep her attention focused on her catch of this crown prince if she planned to work any advantage through his affection.
“I like you, Lady ArreNu,” the crown princ
e spoke again. “I welcome you to my household tonight,” he smiled, “but first you will rest and be refreshed. In the morning you’ll begin again. I’m certain my beloved will agree to you and you’ll find joy in being part of our family,” the prince stood up and helped Ariennu stand with him. Together, they went back to the presence of the king and knelt before him for a blessing. When he smiled vaguely, still lost in his own thoughts, the prince took the gesture as permission to sit for a few moments in silence.
As they sat contemplating the evening together, Ari considered Naibe again. She glanced at the youngest woman, still un-chosen, while the king and crown prince whispered to each other in a ritualized farewell. Naibe-Ellit sat by the sesen pool, her hand swirling back and forth in the water. For a moment Ariennu sensed the girl still considered tumbling face forward into the pool to drown herself. She wouldn’t be successful if she tried; too many able-bodied men would drag her out. Ari wanted to stay a little longer to see that Naibe would be going to a good situation, but she knew the prince wanted to be on his way. She felt him ease her up as he bowed again to his father, King Menkaure. Ari glanced one last time as he moved her to the entrance of the open courtyard to await the arrival of his bearers and ready-men with his sedan chair.
Ari followed him quickly, whispering under her thoughts to both of her sisters as she left, even though she knew neither one sensed her words. It begins. Be strong and let’s find our way back to each other when we can!
CHAPTER 7: NAIBE’S CHARM
Naibe- Ellit felt the announcement of Marai’s death sweep over her like a wave of dark, falling night. She cried and ached inside until there was nothing left but hollow dullness. When she first heard the old priest say the words about his destruction, she wanted to leap out of her skin; to somehow fly to Marai’s ghost, never to return. Brown-eyed Naibe knew Deka and Ari had thought she would die where she stood when she heard the news. That would have been the greatest gift ever, she thought. Her world was falling apart. Everything good thing in her life was suddenly gone, ripped out, dog-shredded and broken. She knew her sister-wives had tried to help her, but she didn’t want their help. No. No solace but his arms, and if not here, then perhaps I shall join him beyond where, gone from skin, we can be one forever. I’ll find where they lay him down and lie down with him. That’s what Ari wants too. What’s this? She recalled the priest telling Ariennu that Marai’s marvelous body was destroyed by the light of wisdom. Was he burnt by the sun? Then, let me find a scrap of an ash. I will consume it with the finest wine so… Oh no, no, no. If he is nothing, I am nothing. Naibe-Ellit thought of how she had panted and gasped, her breath growing short. Her sight had blurred and grayed, and then finally her legs failed. She knew it was wrong to allow a man to overtake her so greatly, but Marai had loved her and she had loved him back. She knew it would take too much effort on her part to ever love another man. Perhaps she would fly away after all, as Deka suggested. She hoped whoever chose her tonight would at least be considerate, so that she could dream of Marai when she lay with him.
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