24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “Horus is mentioned in the prophecy, David. Thou shalt find the Wedjat standing by thee like the watchers, which he must gather in the thousands,’” Askari recited. “You are found, the Wedjat, the Eye of Horus, and by a watcher: Faris.”

  Silence filled the yard. They were serious. Him—Horus.

  This galled David. He thought he’d been hunted for being the son of a companion. Now they were saying he was Horus in the myth?

  “How handy is that, Obi Wan Kenobi? Luke arrives on your doorstep?”

  The sarcasm confused Askari, whose English was otherwise remarkable.

  “Askari, we waste our time here,” Haidar said. “We have our plan of attack. We must strike before the Shemsu Seth grow more powerful. Our law requires that we restore balance.”

  David lifted a palm in approval. He had come here to garner their protection, but the further he traveled from Cairo, the more he wished to return to try to contact Zahara. They didn’t even have a phone in this place and a wireless signal was a pipe dream.

  “Faris has confirmed that they are collecting the Osiris,” Haidar continued.

  Leaning casually against the wall, Jamal, High Priest of Deir Abd-al-Fu’ad, spoke: “We mourn our fallen, Haidar. But the Osiris cannot be fully assembled.” Everyone turned. “In ancient times, there were twelve companions of Horus, plus Seth—the betrayer—Isis, and Horus.”

  In the shadow of the wall, no one saw David’s astonishment. Twelve deirs. Twelve companions. Twelve apostles including the betrayer, Judas, Mary, and Jesus. Perhaps he should have listened closer to his father when a child. He filed the information away.

  “When the spine was divided the companions retained twelve parts. Horus held the spinal cord; Isis, the seven neck vertebrae; and Seth, the five parts of the lower back,” Jamal explained in English, clearly for the benefit of their guest. “Based on reports from those who escaped the massacres, we retain only four, at most seven. This means they have acquired five of ours for certain, and we must assume they have the pieces attributed to Seth and Isis. Horus only knows where the spinal cord resides.”

  “So it is a matter of protecting what we have, retrieving what was taken, and discovering the location of the spinal cord kept by Horus,” Askari stated, but David read the doubt in his eyes.

  “The imbalance cannot be ignored. Can’t you sense it?” Haidar stared at them all, eyes scorning. “Void is at its zenith, while the Fullness fades. We are Re’s guardians. Our duty is to retain an equal share of the day, to retain the balance.”

  “Of course we feel it,” Askari shot back.

  David looked around and searched for the missing feeling. He mouthed the words Void and Fullness, but he also remembered the scythed dog, the dwarf, and the pain in his chest.

  “We will only have one chance to win back our portions of the Osiris, Haidar. The southern deirs have not reached Deir Abd-al-Aziz. We need them, and the tablet may yield knowledge.” Askari pointed back to David.

  The golden tablet lay upon his pack, dull in the shade. After Faris had reminded David of the Shemsu Hor’s ancient tongue, he had hoped it was the reason why he couldn’t translate the text on its opposite side. This was not the case.

  “It’s meaningless to us all,” Haidar replied. “The southern deirs may never arrive. Deir Abd-al-Malik was destroyed down to a single companion—Katle, and he was turned against us.”

  “Without the spine, the prophet’s vessel cannot be found, and without the vessel, Osiris cannot return,” Jamal said. “Our priority is for riders to collect the three remaining Shemsu Hor pieces of the Osiris of which we are uncertain. They are to be returned here for protection. I require three volunteers.” Faris leapt up, but Jamal picked through the dozen companions who vied to accept the charge. It would be Bisher, Faysal, and Nassar. Those selected huddled with the three remaining high priests, Jamal, Michael, and Rushdy, to discuss the locations of the vertebrae. Faris slumped to the ground. Haidar stomped away.

  “You will each take a falcon to provide communication should it be necessary,” Shen said, rushing over to the clutch of companions. He wore his thick gauntlet and, in it, a falconer’s feathered lure.

  “So be it, take a falcon and may Horus be with you,” Jamal called as the clump dispersed, the three riders departing to prepare. Shen left to retrieve their respective birds.

  David ripped free another hunk of the tough, but tasty bread.

  “We could use another warrior, David.” Askari crouched by his side.

  “This is all nuts.” David swept his hand over the departing companions.

  “Is it?” Askari pursed his lips.

  “Sure, you’re basing a theory of the present-day murders of your community on a religion that stole parts of Egyptian myth. It’s a circular reference. This Shemsu Hor business preceded all Christianity. Long ago I realized that half the world’s population believed the ancient beliefs of those they had attempted to stamp out.”

  “So?” Askari asked.

  “So, religion is a lie. And if the Christians stole, then why not Egyptian myth? From what legacy did it steal?”

  “Who says the Christians are thieves?”

  “That Christianity stole from Egyptian myth, among others, is not in dispute,” David dismissed. “It made it easier for conquerors to defeat a people if they allowed them to keep their sun symbols in the form of halos, their ankh in the cross. In time, the cross became sacred and the ankh forgotten.”

  “You are mistaken, Doctor Nidaal. Christians didn’t steal anything from Egyptian myth. Egyptian priests influenced Christianity.” David eyed Askari. “Why do you think that the Egyptians, after three thousand years or more of consistent, virtually homogenous beliefs, accepted a new belief system with barely a fight?” Askari smiled.

  David’s jaw moved, but nothing came out. He hadn’t considered this alternative. He was dizzy from sunstroke and the information seemed to swim in his head. An evolutionary theory swept years of research away, if it were true.

  “No.” He shook his head. Askari waited. “Christians killed those Egyptians who did not convert.” David wiped his brow.

  Askari nodded. “Some resisted directly, but mostly the Egyptian priesthood adopted a passive approach. When Christianity arrived, the Christians closed the temples, resulting in two outcomes. Trusted and wise priests were without a home, and the peasantry was without direction. The peasants began to resort to household deities, in local worship, rather than the true Egyptian gods, and this led to claims of paganism.”

  David remained silent, sucking in his cheeks. Askari continued. “The priests had two choices, to be killed or to regain a measure of their power through conversion to Christianity. They elected to become the priests the Christians needed. The concept of martyrdom is Christian. The Egyptians are a practical people, and the priests controlled the masses. The Egyptians formed the first monasteries. These monasteries under Pachomius in the fourth century A.D. grew rapidly. In the tradition of the Egyptian temples, monasteries were the source of medical care, education, religion, law, and writing.”

  “Of course.” David slapped his knee. “The monks became the eventual keepers of the Bible.”

  “Yes, the monks, as scribes, had the chance to rewrite the Bible over a period of approximately four centuries, during its formative years.”

  “Monastic communities were not new. They were Egyptian temples, a resurrection of their prior lives,” David whispered.

  “Did you really believe that the Christians would steal the concept of baptism by water, the Egyptian symbol for matter? Or the concept of the Holy Trinity when most Egyptian temples were dedicated to three gods, all aspects of the one God. At Edfu, the temple dedicated to Horus, Horus is depicted slaying a hippopotamus, does that not sound familiar?”

  “Saint George slaying the dra
gon … I know,” David murmured.

  “Why would they steal these? Christianity is predicated on resurrection, as is the myth of Osiris. It is one thing to suggest that dates are selected as festival days to coincide with pagan beliefs and certain symbols are retained in order to, as you say, subdue the masses. But it is wholly another to adopt the mainstay of pagan beliefs in order to supplant them, especially since conquerors most often conquered in the name of religion.”

  David’s chest tightened with schoolboy exhilaration.

  “You said rewrite the Bible?” he asked. It had been proof of this that had brought him here.

  “Yes,” Askari said. “Some of the language in the Bible agrees directly with the hieroglyphic-based texts, a language deemed to have been lost until Champillion made his translation of hieroglyphics in the nineteenth century. For instance, the Ba of a dead Egyptian, represented as a human-headed bird—”

  “Angels,” David interrupted.

  “Perhaps, but not my point. The Ba travels to the Hall of Ma’at, or to judgment. There it gives a negative confession against the commandments. Many of these commandments are similar to those provided to the Christian Moses. The Ba then states, reading the Book of the Dead, that he has given bread to the hungry man and water to the thirsty man and clothing to the naked person and a boat to the shipwrecked mariner. He gives answer to all the things that Jesus might ask a Christian at the gate to heaven.”

  “If Christianity existed in such a rigid form independent of Egyptian myth, then why does it have such an Egyptian parallel?”

  “Because it is Egyptian,” Askari concluded. “To a point,” he qualified.

  “You said the Egyptians had four centuries of control over the Bible, what happened after that?” David leaned forward. His eyes glistened despite the fatigue and dehydration.

  “The Copts broke with the Church. Coptic Christianity was the original bastion of ancient Egyptian thought.”

  David recalled the newly completed mosaic in the courtyard before the Hanging Church; he remembered the pope admitting the link between the Copt faith and Egyptian myth. “Egyptian myth is alive and well,” David said. It explained why Shagar had helped him, but why did he show such fear of the tablet?

  “Alive, but not well,” Askari commented grimly. “Not at its spiritual heart.”

  “Then why don’t you tell anyone?” David demanded. “Christian fundamentalists say that theirs is the word of God and that the Bible is to be taken literally.”

  “Each time a priest stands and teaches a parable, he promotes our beliefs. Why would we harm the very religion we wish to protect?”

  David’s brow pinched together.

  “A name is less important than a symbol,” Askari continued, “and facts and dates are less important than the myth.”

  A light fired in David’s eyes, but it wasn’t religious understanding. If he could tell this story, if he could bring proof, it would make him a superstar amongst academics.

  “So will you join us?” Askari asked.

  “Askari, I appreciate this, more than you know. However, a few days ago I was a professor at a university, really happy, I’ve got a girlfriend I need to help, and although this is all enlightening, I don’t see how it affects me.”

  Askari leveled his gaze at David and David flushed.

  “Doctor Nidaal,” Askari’s mouth barely opened. “It does affect you. They may be trying to kill you because you are the Wedjat of prophecy.”

  David rolled his eyes.

  “And if we do not succeed, the consequences will reach your university and your happy life.”

  “What does it do anyway?” he asked.

  “The Spine of Osiris? You do not know?” Askari shook his head. “In the right hands, the chosen prophet will become an aspect of him. Osiris. He becomes a god.”

  “And in the wrong hands?” David asked, his voice subdued.

  “In the wrong hands, the wielder …” Askari looked up to the temple’s ankh in search of an answer. He turned to David with a puzzled expression. “He will become a corrupt reflection of a god, what the Christians call the Antichrist; the Muslims, Najjal.” A falcon called high above. “And I fear his first act will be to prove just how terribly powerful he is.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Haidar stumbled about his cavern home. His grumbles echoed like distant thunder as he collected objects: a waterskin, a knife, a flashlight.

  Haidar had spent his sixty-three years in the light of Re. Born of a companion father; his father had instructed him from a young age, and he was baptized as early as was allowed, at age twelve.

  Before hair had sprouted on his cheeks, Haidar had committed to protect the Fullness for as long as he lived. In sixty-three years, his greatest challenge had been the hardship of loneliness, the flood of thoughts, wants, and desires, against which he forced ritual, duty, and faith. Now with the tide running far out into black waters, thoughts and logic smashed the dyke of restraint and unleashed the demand for revenge. His father had been the High Priest of Deir Abd-al-Aziz, murdered at ninety-eight, three days past.

  Haidar knelt at a table; the sundisc upon it had been his father’s. His fingers traced the hieroglyphs engraved in the oiled iron. The aten’s rim read: Shelter is in his Eye. Horus’s victorious strength is in his Eye. The power of Horus is in his Eye. The central hole of the aten seemed to accuse him.

  “Haidar, are you ready?” Three shadows filled the opening to his dwelling.

  “Yes, Damurah, Ahmed, Saba.” The sundisc slipped back into its cracked leather sheath. “Are the others prepared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rendezvous at Edfu. Go in pairs. Go now.” The last command echoed in the stark cave.

  The dark deepened as he retreated to the shrine of Re, a simple sundisc sketched on the wall, also drawn by his father.

  “Father, grant me your light in this battle. Grant me the strength to lead. Guide me to the hand of Re.”

  Haidar’s nails dug into his palms, and then his heel ground into the dirt floor as he whirled and strode into the afternoon heat to join a march to war.

  “How dare he split our force? Haidar threatens all.” Askari trembled as he paced the small sacred chamber of the deir temple. He had spared a brief moment for his disappointment before he accepted that Haidar was perceived as the greater leader. Then he had shoved his ego aside in favor of a controlled vent.

  Fully eighty of the hundred remaining companions had departed with Haidar, taking all of the monastery vehicles and most those of the other deirs. Askari knelt on the floor and hung his head. He closed his eyes. The truth was, Askari wished he were at Haidar’s side.

  He might be able to catch them; they could only be headed to one place. But one additional companion against the Temple of Seth would do little. Here Askari could rally the companions left behind and reach out to the others to lend them strength and skill.

  He worked his jaw. The Shemsu Hor needed the complete Osiris to prevail. What remained of their portion of the spine was rolled within a piece of lambskin, tucked into his robe. The priority must be to centralize all pieces that remain. And then to attack. Everyone.

  His grunt echoed.

  “What now?” Faris entered.

  Askari’s lips parted in surprise. Faris was like a son to Haidar, and Haidar had not told him. Faris’s eyes were bloodshot and the left one twitched.

  “There is much we can still do, Faris. Let us not linger in injury while the scorpion prepares to sting.” Faris turned a tired eye on Askari. “Send Syf to Haidar. Tell him we will be ready when they have need.” Faris smiled weakly and then dashed from the temple, his footsteps light and quick. Askari hoped the high priests would agree to help Haidar, or be too busy embalming the dead to care.

  Haidar stood upon a fallen
block of stone. Edfu, the Temple of Horus, was a long ride in the deir’s battered jeep, and it would be another day’s convoy to Cairo, but it was important that his men prepare fully.

  Haidar’s eyes, black as onyx, met each of those of the gathered companions. The four-score men packed the narrow corridor at Edfu between its outer wall and the inner sanctum of the Temple of Horus. In ancient times, they would have walked up the eastern steps and wound upward like a falcon rises on thermals. The boat of Horus, called The Boat of a Million Years, would have sailed upon their shoulders, held aloft to catch the sun’s first rays.

  Today, the group had paid the fifteen-pound entry fee per person and, after a raised eyebrow evaluation by the guard and a twenty-pound baksheesh, were allowed to weave through the tourists to the corner of the temple. Not thirty yards away, a guide addressed his group. Several of the tourists wore shorts baring half-moon buttocks and naked waists.

  “This is our duty.” Haidar pointed to an image of Horus, regal upon his solar barque, his spear buried in a hippo. “Horus defeated Seth.” His voice carried and the tour guide flicked him an annoyed glance. “I have brought you here so that Horus may remember our confession in the Halls of Ma’at. We will not have the Book of the Dead to read from in our coffins.”

  The companions raised their eyes in prayer.

  “I have not committed sin,” they began in unison; “I have not stolen. I have not uttered lies. I have not committed adultery. I have not slandered. I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.” The men tilted their heads toward the sun; it did not penetrate the corridor, but fringed the upper bulwark with fire. “I have not acted with undue haste. I have not slain men and women. I have not cursed God.” They finished but remained staring at the light.