24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “And the girl.” The dwarf’s head panned. Samiya shied behind her mother.

  Tara pushed her daughter forward. As if he were sighted, the dwarf’s rough hand reached out to clasp her wrist. Samiya whimpered. The dwarf nodded satisfaction and turned.

  “I love you, daughter,” Tara called out as the dwarf dragged Samiya into the necropolis. “It is for the balance.” The iron gate swung shut between them.

  “Mommy,” Samiya whined, wrenched onward by the dwarf. The gate clanged. “Mommy!”

  Two hairless Dobermans trotted at their flanks. Samiya twisted to catch a glimpse of her mother, to wave, to promise she would remember the balance.

  But Tara was already running away.

  New Moon

  Chapter One

  Present day—Coptic Cairo, Egypt

  “I want the tablet, Tara.” Sam pointed at her mother, the accusing finger tipped with a razor-sharp nail. Her other hand gripped a hound’s leash, and she heeled the dog to her hip when it threatened to lunge.

  On the bed, a second hairless dog straddled her mother and slavered drool across Tara’s cheek and lips. She twisted her head away from the hound’s hot panting.

  Sam knew her jackal mask and assumed accent did not conceal her identity. She trembled at the look etched on her mother’s face. With most of their forces deployed elsewhere, Pharaoh, the leader of the Shemsu Seth, had honored Sam with the task of retrieving the Tablet of Destiny—her first important mission in which she was the commander. Sam thumbed the heavy gold ring on her finger, reminding herself of her goal. Her sentiment was a barrier to her mission’s success. She coiled her rage inward.

  “Where’s the damned tablet!”

  Tara flinched, then kicked the hound as she jumped upright. With a yelp, the dog slipped from the bed and curled underneath.

  Sam’s canine headdress obscured her peripheral vision, but it also prevented her mother from seeing her face, the sweat on her brow, the strain about her green eyes. Sam’s emotions, like the veins criss-crossing her dark neck and cheeks, ran too near the surface.

  The window framed Tara’s age-thickened body, the street light shining through her thin cotton nightgown. Outside, riotous cheers clamored. A procession wound through the alleys of Coptic Cairo.

  The hound under the bed barked. Tara tossed back the mattress and snatched the dagger laying on the bed’s wire frame. She stabbed between the wires until the hound’s howls died.

  Sam knew she should kill Tara—set the other dog onto her back and cut her throat. Sam’s knuckles were bone white. Her mother turned. Blood from her blade dripped onto the scorpion hilt and her fist. She blinked away angry tears and glared.

  “Get out, Samiya.” Her lips barely moved. “The tablet isn’t here.”

  “Where,” Sam insisted and let the dog take a foot of leash. Its front paws scratched at the air as the black iron collar dug into its scruff.

  Tara waggled the dagger in the direction of the hound like a master readying to toss a stick. Sam had expected repentance, that age would have stripped her mother of stature. Sam shook her head and whistled to the men she led.

  “Bring him in,” Sam called, watching her mother carefully from beneath the mask. The old woman’s eyes flicked from Sam to the door and back.

  Two figures entered the room, each wrapped in black robes with deep cowls. From beneath the hoods poked the masks of a falcon’s beak and a baboon’s muzzle. Between them, they dragged Tariq, his silver-haired head bowed. The masked men dropped him to the floor. He groaned when he landed.

  A squat dwarf followed the men and took the leash of Sam’s dog. He restrained another red-eyed hound that slunk ahead of him into the room. The dog rose to the dwarf’s broad shoulder, its eyes glowing with a whisper of Void and its hide rippling with muscle. The dwarf’s smile, nearly buried by his beard, vanished when calls for his third hound failed to bring him to heel. Whistle-like hisses shot from his lips. The two remaining dogs settled to sniff at the prostrate man’s buttocks.

  “I ask once more. Where’s the tablet?” Sam repeated, her threat made potent by the quietness of her speech.

  Tara looked from the dogs to Sam’s jackal mask and gritted her teeth. Sam spun and kicked Tariq. Ribs cracked. He cried out, rolling onto his back.

  Tara flung the blade. Sam’s forearm deflected it to the stone wall. The dagger clanged to the floor. Sam smiled at her mother’s reaction. She did feel emotion, just not love for her daughter. That made Sam’s next task easier.

  She concentrated, gripping the copper wire Tariq once showed her long ago like one holds the root of a tree when descending a riverbank, and then she reached into the chaotic energy of the Void. The primal well brimmed with dark energy, so near, so easily drawn. Filled with the Void’s rage, she raised her arms above her head. Tendrils of blue-black lightning crackled between outstretched fingertips.

  Her mother stumbled backward, falling onto the bed frame. Mouth agape, her eyes reflected the snaking Void. Sam’s hands lowered as she bent toward Tariq.

  “Stop!” Tara screamed.

  The plea crashed upon the dispassionate Void. Worms of energy arced across Tariq’s back. Sam shook, her teeth clacking together with each shock. The old man convulsed. The room stank of ozone.

  “How could you?” Her mother’s chest heaved, and her lips trembled.

  Sam released the Void.

  Stooping to retrieve the dagger, Sam drew a deep breath. “The tablet.”

  Her mother remained silent. Sam loomed above Tariq and placed her foot on his neck.

  Tara’s eyes shut. “I don’t have it.” Her tone appealed. Tariq gurgled as Sam applied pressure.

  He signed with his hands and fingers. Say nothing, Tara. This is no longer your daughter.

  I will kill him. Sam gestured in reply. She had not forgotten the language; she’d practiced it for years in secret, in the dark, in wait for her mother to return for her. But she never came. No one ever came.

  Sam leaned farther on to Tariq’s neck. His fingers clawed with pain.

  Tara’s hand slashed. Stop! Creases radiated from her tear-filled eyes. “It’s gone, but we have a copy,” she gasped.

  Sam didn’t smile. Her mission was unsuccessful, and she had lost a hound. Its death required blood sacrifice. Tara indicated a rectangular box, lying on a dresser. On the box lid were a series of squares, some of which were marked with hieroglyphs, while others were blank. It was the game Senet, an ancient Egyptian precursor to backgammon. Sam had a dim recollection of playing it. Her good memories were all dim.

  She snatched the box from the dresser and snapped back the lid. She found not white and black chips, but a sheaf of parchment. The scroll crackled as it unfurled. A poor rubbing from the original, the hieroglyphs were distorted. She rolled the paper and banged the box shut with her fist.

  “Where is the gold?”

  For the dog’s death, the dwarf expected a sacrifice, and his pale eyes glinted. Sam looked from Tariq to Tara. Once more, her mother was expressionless.

  Sam bent back over Tariq, who wheezed where he sat on the floor, clutching his side. With the hilt of the dagger Sam struck him on the temple, and he thumped to the stone. Tara lunged, but the masked men caught her and held her by her armpits. The dwarf grinned.

  Sam opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Signing three quick movements, she accented them sharply. Forgive me, I must.

  The tip of the blade traced across Tariq’s chest and hovered over his heart. Sam’s vision blurred with tears. Tara writhed in the grip of the men.

  “May Seth, god of chaos, accept this sacrifice,” Sam said.

  She drove the blade downward until it scored rock.

  Tara choked for air as Tariq shook in spasm.

  They both fell limp.

&
nbsp; Sam knelt beside the corpse. Energy coursed from her fingertips to her spine. Tariq’s murder expanded her access to the Void. The charge raced, permeating each cell of her bones, muscles, and blood, arcing ageless and gnarled. Each caress of the Void changed something, took something, replaced something.

  Tara sobbed.

  Sam motioned for the men to drag her mother from the room. As she passed, Sam struck Tara’s head against the wall to ensure no surprises as they made their escape. Sam stopped her tears, embarrassed by the show of weakness. She stood and took a deep breath before she, too, strode from the bedroom.

  “Place her in the bier,” Sam ordered the men. Two long handles protruded from each end of the white-draped, rectangular litter squatting in the centre of the living room. The men turned up its curtain and revealed a bed of gold and silver stitched pillows.

  Sam couldn’t know if the tablet rubbing was authentic, but she could take her mother and keep their link to the tablet intact. It was the only excuse Sam could find not to kill her.

  Sam studied the surroundings. The living room had not changed in a quarter-century: pale green couches draped in embroidered fabric, books, everywhere books, candles, and blown-glass vases. Unconscious, Tara slipped from the litter’s plush confines, and her head hit the floor. Sam winced.

  Tucked into the corner of a shelf was a small case made of leather with brass clasps, covered with stickers of flowers and fish. She squinted at it, then jerked it from the shelf. When she opened the case, a strangled moan escaped her lips. It was the bag she had packed before her delivery to the Shemsu Seth.

  The lid snapped shut on the dolls and dresses of her childhood. One of her doll’s legs, a ragged favorite, stuck out of the suitcase seam. Her mother had been right; Sam had needed none of it.

  Sam backed away and then spied a computer tower wedged between two bookcases. She tossed it in with her mother. Its files would be scoured for the tablet’s translation and potential location. Sam’s hands left red sticky fingerprints on the casing. Her stomach rolled at the sight of Tariq’s blood. The tiny kitchen, complete with miniature stove and fridge, held no tablet, nor did Tariq’s closet-sized room. Sam whistled to the sentry.

  Another robed man entered and stood at one corner of the bier. After lifting the body of the dead hound inside, the dwarf dashed aboard with his dogs.

  “No,” Sam demanded, her voice cracking. “Leave one dog here.” The dwarf whistled, and a hound jumped from the bier, crouching when it landed, ready to leap again.

  With the curtains of the bier drawn, Sam and the men each hefted a corner and shuffled out into the courtyard.

  No moonlight filtered through the sycamore branches. A carving of Saint George mounted on an Arabian horse and spearing a dragon hung above the yard’s iron-studded door. They exited onto the streets and caught the tail of the procession. At this late hour, the parade had slowed but remained festive still, in celebration of some saint Sam could not recall.

  She whooped as they joined the end of the train that snaked its way past the Babylon Fortress and the Convent of St. George. The Coptic revelers took up her cheer. Sam stumbled, awkward on the uneven cobblestone as they jostled amongst the partygoers, threading through the streets until they breached the walls. The procession continued into the next neighborhood, but Sam’s entourage slipped from the rear and turned toward the tombs.

  As they entered the City of the Dead, she nodded to a man who lurked in the shadow of the gates. The bier’s handle chafed, and she switched shoulders for the tenth time.

  They turned down a thoroughfare lined with windowless mausoleums. Family names rather than street numbers were inscribed on marble, granite, and limestone façades. Eyes stared from the safety of their sanctuaries. A propane lamp’s hiss was silenced. The Shemsu Seth ruled these people by fear and myth. Sam struggled to her full height, her chin high.

  When they stopped in front of a large marble mastaba, they lowered the bier.

  The dwarf and his dog scrambled out and clambered around the side wall, disappearing into another sandstone crypt, one of the many entrances to an underworld that stretched from the City of the Dead to the suburb of Heliopolis and the pyramids of Giza. Other dwarfs would return to take care of the hound corpse.

  The baboon and hawk-masked men slipped Tara’s arms around their necks. She seemed smaller, but Sam felt no satisfaction in the change. She was glad she had been given this task; any other Shemsu Seth would have killed Tara. But as they entered the arched entry of the crypt, unease twisted Sam’s stomach. Death might have been a mercy.

  She watched Tara—her mother—descend ahead of her into darkness.

  Chapter Two

  Near Nag Hammadi, Egypt

  Askari, peering from a low bench fashioned from the cliff, contemplated the black scarab. He watched the beetle push a dung ball up the slope, its legs like tiny lightning bolts. The beetle climbed backward toward the band of sunlight that struck over the ridge top. Askari’s scarred face, pocked like the cliff that housed his ascetic brothers, already basked in the sun’s rays. Within the caves, the Shemsu Hor had fasted in solitude, but now they roused to convene.

  The beetle shoved the ball beyond the dark shadow, and the sun began to warm the larvae inside. Askari clapped his hands in praise of the day’s rebirth.

  The reflection was appropriate and augured well, for today was the first day of the final lunar cycle before Akhet, the ancient Egyptian New Year. The holiday was different from when he was young, prior to the modern Aswan Dam’s construction. Then Akhet had marked the start of the annual Nile flood, when waters brimmed over banks to refresh the river’s slender shoulders with black alluvial.

  As a young initiate, Askari had watched the water level each day with anticipation. The village women’s preparations for the festival grew frenzied as time grew short, the monks’ fasting and praying more ardent. Today, the dam meted out the waters in a measured, unnatural feed, and the monks checked the date on their watches.

  He sighed through his gray-black beard, which hung like moss to his chest. Pulling himself to a stand, he leaned on his walking staff. He had fasted all week. The vision of his home swam before him. Askari needed his wits. He must ensure that the bread was ready for the break of fast.

  He twitched nervously. Over fifty-eight years he had trained, been educated, and had educated others, all for this chance. Most generations never saw the prophet’s rebirth. Today, twenty-nine days prior to the death of the Fullness, the Shemsu Hor, the Shemsu Seth, and the Sisters of Isis would begin to gather. By the week’s end, the Spine of Osiris would be assembled, and the relic would choose a new prophet—as it had Jesus, Confucius, Moses, and the pharaohs before them.

  Askari would be the new prophet’s companion. This wish had filled many empty years of meditation and doubt. He shivered despite the heat and furrowed his heavy brow.

  “Bah,” he said. “Assemble the spine, restore the Fullness, and live on as a disciple.”

  He needed to calculate the number of loaves of bread required. The Shemsu Hor numbered twelve desert monasteries, or deirs. Each deir had thirty-five companions. He struggled with the math. “Bah,” he repeated, his disused voice resisting speech.

  He knelt and drew two columns with his staff. In the first, he marked the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. Beside these, he traced 35, 70, 140, 280, and 560. “If 8 and 4 are 12, then I need 140, plus 280,” he murmured and tugged at his beard as he added the respective numbers: 420 loaves. His neighbor Basil would help. They needed to retrieve the dough from the village women, called the watchers.

  “Basil,” Askari croaked. “Basil, I am ready to begin baking.”

  Only the wind and a thin wall separated his cave from Basil’s. A breeze blew around the mud barrier; the gusts rose with the heat of day. Weak with hunger, Askari nearly fainted when he stood, but he
refused to reach for the Fullness to augment his endurance.

  Avoidable use of the Fullness was forbidden, especially so close to the end of its cycle and with the Void at its zenith. Drawing on the Fullness accessed a limited psychic pool from which the wielder could obtain the skills of ancient masters or augment their natural telekinetic and telepathic capabilities. It was not to be called upon for steadiness.

  Askari trudged into his home. Beside the entry was a niche, within which stood an urn. He ladled water taken from a local oasis where the Persians had once cleaned their swords of the blood of martyrs. The first spoonful he drank, and the second he used to clean his hands and face. The third he carried inside.

  Each year the companions left their deirs to gather and re-enact the rebirth of the Benu bird, the Phoenix, retelling the myth of Osiris’s return from the dead. The spine itself was symbolic of the resurrection. This time, however, the gathering would include the Sisters of Isis and the Shemsu Seth, a meeting unseen for five hundred years. Every five hundred years, Osiris returned in the form of the prophet. And the spine moved from the symbolic to the literal.

  As he entered the cave, Askari pulled close the hood of his brown ceremonial robe. A golden brocade trim met at the front of the cowl and then arced backward, dividing the robe in two. The frayed stitching curved down his back, representing Osiris’s spine. Deep in the cave’s recess, a white plastered shrine reflected light from the entry.

  He raised his eyes to the wings painted over the shrine. Between the wings shone the sun-symbol of Re. He knelt before the altar, splashing water across the grooved offering table, just as it would be spilled at the prophet’s rebirth. The profile of the goddess Isis stared down at Horus’s face as he suckled at her breast. Beneath, some ascetic’s childish hand had drawn Horus’s battle against Seth. Horus avenged his father Osiris’s dismemberment, losing an eye in the fight. Horus defeated Seth, but before he could strike the deathblow, his mother, Isis, caught his arm. Horus was so enraged that he chopped off her head. Askari hoped that the meeting of the three cults would proceed more smoothly. After all, they were each committed to maintaining the balance.