24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “There is no god who has become a star without a companion. Shall I be your companion?” Askari asked the mural.

  No answer issued from the mouth of Isis’s profile, nor any slurping mumble from Horus’s full lips. The engines of a passing jet scored the silence. Askari touched Horus. Behind the plaster was a secret he shared with only the Tablet of Destiny and the leaders of the companions. Askari was a keeper. The last keeper had passed on the location over two decades ago with jealous words: “Greatness is as much luck as it is heart, Askari. Do not grow vain on the shoulders of chance.” Askari smiled. Luck, yes, but not heart. Perseverance had made him keeper.

  His fingers caressed the plaster hiding the relic, untouched for half a millennium. Today he would break its seal.

  He walked back into the sunlight, sneezing at the sudden warmth, and curled around the mud wall to Basil’s home.

  “Basil!” he called. “Companion!”

  Demotic writing and geometric designs illustrated Basil’s side of the separating wall like ancient graffiti. Askari couldn’t read it, but he knew its translation: May the Trinity unify the Ennead lest we become the millions. An Ennead was nine gods. It never failed to impress Askari that the ancient Egyptians had a hieroglyph for a “million” even in its earliest lexicon over five thousand years ago. The text was a warning. The Trinity—Osiris, Horus, and Isis—must unify the Ennead, or humanity would lose its connection to the Fullness. The message missed one important point. They also needed the cooperation of the Shemsu Seth.

  Askari approached Basil’s entry and rapped the side with his staff. The wind blew a hollow note across the mouth of the monk’s home.

  “Basil? You ready?” He huffed.

  Stomping into the single chamber, Askari pushed his staff before him, his eyes blind after the bright sunlight. The tip found Basil first.

  The monk was sprawled on the ground, the dirt darkened by his blood.

  Chapter Three

  Beneath the City of the Dead, Cairo

  With Sam’s jackal mask off, the pretence of anonymity was discarded. A thick vein pulsed on her forehead, down her taut cheek and corded neck, disappearing into black robes. Tara hung by her wrists, manacled too high for her toes to touch the stone floor. She shook in the dank underworld.

  “You don’t have the tablet.” Pharaoh hulked upon a throne like a statue of Ramesses II, replete with red hair and fiery beard. He was just a man, but his power washed down the pyramid of steps to break over Sam’s dark face.

  “Without the tablet, we cannot find all the parts of the spine, and without the spine …”

  In the balconies above, dwarfs clustered with other followers of Seth, the deity of the so-called Shemsu Seth. Sam bent under the weight of their catcalls, her gaze shifting to her sandaled feet; where black leather straps laced up fine-boned toes.

  “You don’t have the tablet, and you bring your mother in its stead. You did not kill her.”

  “The woman knows,” Sam stuttered, lifting her head.

  “Speak or die, woman.” The Pharaoh stood and raised his djed staff, a thick shaft of burnished mahogany topped by four equal crossbars. The air filled with static. “Where is the Tablet of Destiny?” Tara jerked against the manacles as Pharaoh pulled her forward over a pit. The hair on Sam’s arms and neck rose. Sparks arced between the crossbars of Pharaoh’s staff.

  “We have the text, Pharaoh,” Sam soothed.

  “Only part,” he snapped. “Text any Shemsu Seth pup can recite. And I would have the gold.” His words slid like the hiss of sand down a slope. “I would have the gold.” The congregation grumbled its accord. “Or I would have blood.”

  “You have blood,” Sam confirmed, pressing on a vein at her cheek. “I killed her partner.”

  Tara’s chains jangled free of Pharaoh’s Void-grip.

  “In battle?”

  “No, in sacrifice. A handler attended. I gave the heart to Seth.”

  “Handler,” Pharaoh called into the balconies.

  A dwarf stood on the stone rail that held back the horde. His arms and shoulders were crowded with muscles.

  “Is this true, did you witness?”

  Sam swallowed.

  “Samiya sacrificed the man to Seth, Pharaoh.” The dwarf’s voice rang clear.

  Pharaoh’s eyes brightened, and Sam sensed him probing the dwarf’s mind.

  “Seth accepts his sacrifice, blessings on you,” Pharaoh rumbled.

  “Blessings on the temple,” Sam responded, drawing a breath.

  “Did you use a black ankh?” Pharaoh asked.

  A sacrifice made using a black ankh consigned the energy of the victim to the Void, a complete death for the human portion of the soul, which would spend eternity roaming the animal Void.

  Sam shook her head. Jeers sluiced down from above. Since she had not used the ankh, Pharaoh could require another sacrifice. Sam glanced to her mother, once again glad Sam had been the one to find her. The woman’s chin rested on her chest, and she stared into the pit beyond her feet.

  “We will remedy that,” Pharaoh said, eyeing Tara.

  “Give me until Horus’s left eye rises,” Sam requested. The left eye meant the full moon, a fortnight before Akhet, the ancient Egyptian New Year. A sacrifice to Seth then would be auspicious.

  Pharaoh paused. The full moon would demand a sacrifice anyway, and sacrifices were not popular when pulled from the rank and file even if they came from the slum of Manshiyat Yaser, Garbage City.

  Shadows veiled his face from where she stood at the temple’s base. The steps before her rose like a pyramid’s courses. Darkness shrouded all but his eyes, which glowed. The ominous radiance wasn’t due to the reflection of the liquid-filled vessels that lit the underworld from high niches. Pharaoh was Void-touched. The cast of his eyes showed he had held the Void too long and risked losing himself in it. Sam clasped and unclasped her hands under the red-tinged gaze.

  “Gold, or blood when the moon is full.” The Pharaoh’s mouth split into a grin. “He was your first, I understand.” He turned to retrieve an item beside the throne. “Congratulations.”

  At the base of the stairs to Pharaoh’s throne was an altar carved from a single piece of alabaster. Nine spouts protruded from the altar’s central circular groove. Nine holes in the floor collected the spouts’ offerings. The Pharaoh descended to stand before the altar.

  Sam took a single step back and then held. As he approached, Pharaoh grew larger until he overshadowed the star altar. Upon it, he placed a crossbow and a quiver of bolts.

  “May these serve Seth well.”

  “Hail, Seth!” Approval crashed.

  A rush of pleasure flushed Sam’s cheeks. When she had first joined the Shemsu Seth, she had been tested, and although she could harness the Void, Pharaoh had been disappointed; the Void she could reach was a trickle when compared to his strength.

  She stepped forward, looking from the weapon to Pharaoh. His pale broad face had a wide, flat nose placed between considerable cheekbones and above a cavernous mouth. A delta of deep wrinkles spread from the corners of his lips and eyes. His skin appeared stretched thin over his skull. Beneath the shadow of his brow, the eyes shone. When she reached for the crossbow, his mottled hand briefly touched hers. One finger traced the tendons on the back of her hand. She retrieved the weapon, a black, modern crossbow, timeless, yet fitted with a laser sight.

  She attached the quiver to its base and slid her robe’s cord through a loop that enabled her to shoulder the weapon. She grasped its haft and smirked as she aimed.

  “When the full moon rises, Pharaoh.”

  The laser sight traced a red dot on her mother’s forehead.

  Chapter Four

  Near Nag Hammadi, Egypt

  “Basil,” Askari cried. He collapsed
in the dust before the body and stroked Basil’s black hair. Basil’s thick mane had been pulled into a topknot, and each caress by Askari shifted his neck, separating the head from the body. Askari gagged at the reek of blood and shook as he choked back the water he had consumed. His friend lay beheaded.

  “Re, let him rise to you. Fold him in your arms.” Askari’s voice quavered as he recited the ancient funerary words. “Your son comes to you. This Basil comes to you. That you both may stride over the sky, united in darkness. That you may rise on the horizon.” Askari cupped his hands over Basil’s temples and lifted the head, placing it on the corpse’s stomach. He then took the thin body into his arms. No blood drained from the ragged edge of the neck. Basil was long dead.

  Askari began the mile trek to the monastery. Along the rock ridge that surrounded the deir, others quit their caves, some alone, some carried a head; others like Askari managed a whole body. All walked in silence until the tumult of crags and crevices gave way to sand and their gaze fell upon the deir and its temple and ankh.

  “Re riseth!” each shouted. Their calls pierced the stillness.

  “Re riseth.” Askari’s cry boomed to the cliffs. Its echo carried the same bitterness of the others—a cry not of worship, but war.

  By the time Askari reached the monastery, bodies lined the walls, its closed gates besieged by corpses. Basil’s weight bore Askari forward. Bowlegged, he staggered the final paces and slumped the corpse at the wall’s base. Other companions milled about the perimeter and before a gate of iron-banded tree trunks.

  “Open,” shouted a tall bald monk in a tan robe. “Gatekeeper,” he called into the silence. Askari grunted.

  “They must think we have some plague, Haidar,” Askari said. Indeed, plague was sweeping much of Africa. Bereft of Basil’s weight, Askari walked to Haidar.

  “Why do they not answer?” Haidar asked as they met. “No plague can sever a man’s neck.” Askari took Haidar’s hand and clasped the tense claw.

  “I do not know.” Askari hesitated. “Perhaps …” Haidar stared at him hard. “Perhaps no one lives,” Askari finished and leaned against the wall. The sun beat on his face, already hot. Other monks hid their heads under robes or simply lay stunned on the warming sand. “We must open the gate to gain food. Does the Watcher Faris live?”

  Haidar nodded and pointed to a slim man tending a body. The watchers were a support network for the companions. They cleaned, cooked, and conducted non-religious duties in service of the deir. Due to the nature of the tasks, they tended to be female. Their religious role was to bear witness to Osiris’s coming.

  “Faris,” Askari shouted.

  The young, trim-bearded man looked over and started toward him. Faris nodded to Askari; the large brown eyes of his thin face were red-rimmed.

  “You must climb over the wall and unbar the gate.”

  Faris was small and nimble. His sharp features contracted and for a moment annoyance kindled there.

  Askari placed a hand on his elbow, quelling the slight man’s anger, and turned to Haidar. “Let me stand upon your shoulders,” Askari told him.

  Haidar braced against the wall. Askari wrestled onto his back and up onto his shoulders.

  “Quickly,” Haidar whispered to Faris, who stared at the dead.

  Another companion helped to lift Faris, and Askari swung him onto his back. In a burst of strength, Faris scrabbled upward as if a rat escaping water and then dropped over the edge. The companions waited for several minutes; until, finally, a hammer banged at the doors, metal upon metal, and then the latch was free.

  The gates opened a crack, and Askari entered. Bodies were wedged at the base of the doors. Faris had needed to drag corpses away in order to access the latch. His skin had paled to the color of a fire pit’s ash. Together with Haidar, Askari freed the doors of their fleshy stops and opened the gates fully.

  For several minutes, companions moved from body to body and checked for life. Each body had been stabbed through the heart, and many had an eye removed. On an altar whose base depicted a sundisc, the eyes were piled. Under their glutinous mass lay a bas-relief of the Eye of Horus, the Wedjat that Seth had gouged from his nephew in myth.

  “The eyes, Askari,” Haidar said. “This is doubtless the work of the Shemsu Seth.”

  The windshields of three sand-colored monastery jeeps were shattered, the tires slashed and canvas roofs torn. Sackers, in their search for hidden compartments, had cracked many of the panels that lined the temple proper. Askari vomited, finally overcome.

  A shriek, sharp like a falcon’s call, rose above Askari’s retches. Rayla, a young woman who limped due to a childhood case of polio, screamed. Her basket toppled to the sand, which soiled the spilled dough. Her voice lifted in anguish, and like a pierced boil, her wails drew out the companions’ pain.

  “Re Benu—Re Benu,” the companions chanted to the sky, the sun, calling for the resurrection of the dead and of the Egyptian creator god, Re. Askari spat the last of his bile into the darkened sand and whispered: “Thanks be to Horus. I am called. The battle begun.”

  Chapter Five

  Dead surrounded the inner courtyard of the monastery.

  Faris shied from hollow socket stares and the scent of corruption. He had heard of people who, in times of crisis, stood strong and did not crumble. He wondered from what store they received their strength. His narrow shoulders trembled. Haidar, a lanky companion with sunken eyes and a mentor to Faris, carried another corpse in from the desert, his baldhead reflecting the sun.

  Askari clasped the hand of headless Basil as he shouldered him through the gate and into the courtyard for the cleansing ritual. The keeper’s beard swayed as he moved. With Basil lain in the lengthening row, Askari disappeared into the kitchens. Faris looked to the temple’s cracked depiction of a bird with a human head rising from a prostrate Osiris. The panels overlooked the altar. The bird was the Ba, the spirit of Osiris, which was in them all.

  Faris too sought flight. He wished to rise above the desert bowl where the monastery lay and soar over the cool waters of the Nile like his falcon, Syf. He closed his eyes and opened them again, raising his gaze to the temple’s golden ankh and three sandstone domes. The quaking eased for a moment but renewed when his earth-bound sight rested on the dozen dead. His family, their tan robes blackened with blood.

  His birth family lived in the nearby village of Nag Hammadi. As the youngest of eight children in a Muslim family, he had fed on the meager scraps left from already scanty meals. The only true sustenance at the table had been his father’s tales. Stories from the Qu’ran, stories of their ancestors, these Faris could feast upon. They seeded his fascination for Egyptian myth, the remains of which were scattered about the desert.

  His brothers had nicknamed him nos reejal, or “part man.” The name still rankled, but he realized the title was not meant to be derogatory; Faris, by any standard, was only “part.” But because of his size, a camel could carry his weight in addition to another man’s, and a skiff could carry Faris and a larger load. Another hand without the burden, he was company, as well as conscience. The conscience aspect had led him to the companions.

  His grandfather told one story regularly both for the pivotal wealth it provided to the family and, Faris suspected, for easing some inner turmoil. Only after much cajoling would his grandfather’s stern face finally break into a resigned frown, like the expression of a streetseller settling on a price, and he would begin.

  The story of the treasure discovered in the desert inevitably changed with each retelling—the depth of the hole dug to claim the urn deepening; the size of the urn expanding; and the contents of the vessel, a precious tablet, growing.

  At which point, Great-Grandmother would inevitably remark, “And your brother sold it to a one-eyed black marketeer for barely the weight of the gold. Each sheaf of pap
yrus was worth the amount times ten.”

  Faris’s grandfather would scowl and then make everyone laugh with how when his brother broke the urn’s seal they had fled the escaping jinni.

  Great-Grandmother, calling for silence, would continue with her telling of her husband’s death, Faris’s great-grandfather, whose murderer’s heart had filled their stomachs that same night. Warned of the approach of police, Faris’s great-uncle had fled to Cairo to sell the tablet and provide the family with the benefits of their treasure. The pump purchased with the proceeds still pushed water into the fields, and the acreage had expanded to earn currency for the large and extended family seated at the table, though no surplus.

  Faris imagined his grandfather still told the story today, although without the grumbling interjections of Great-Grandmother, who had passed. The story had frustrated Faris; something had been missing. Finally, he asked what had happened when the police had arrived—why they would kill someone, but he only received guarded answers that the messenger had been mistaken and they were not police at all.

  One night he probed his great-uncle when he was drunk on beer, a rarity for a practicing Muslim.

  “Shemsu Seth,” he had said quietly. “The dark brotherhood came and demanded the store of texts, but it was too late.” His head had hung low, whether due to guilt for drinking or for confiding a secret, Faris did not know. “We had another brother, one who did not flee. They killed him along with your great-grandfather.”