Zahara stopped and then looked to Pharaoh. He smiled and drew her to his side with Void.
David cleared his throat.
“Osiris needs his Isis, and besides, Seth was presumed by many to be gay.” Pharaoh’s laughter faded as he continued down the passage with Zahara in tow.
David shrugged. Seth had torn Osiris to pieces once. David turned his back on Trand and started into the passageway, but he stopped, frustrated by the darkness. Underground and blind, he was at a disadvantage.
“Dwarf, how do you see in the dark without Void?” David demanded and turned to Trand.
Trand placed a cloth over the blue vials. Darkness swallowed the chamber.
“Now what?” David asked.
“Relax. Darkness itself does not hurt. Everything remains as it was. Let the room tell you what is in it,” the dwarf explained. David scoffed. “No need for the Void, dwarfs do not use the Void to see.”
“I can’t see a thing.”
“Use your ears, make sound and listen to its reply, in it you will see the room’s dimensions, the sarcophagus, altar, all. In time, your mind will recreate the shape and contents using sound.”
David woofed once and then listened. He clenched his fists when nothing appeared. “How long does this take to figure out?”
“Some never learn—others, a few years.”
“Years!” David flexed his jaw and reached to the Void. It ran like a spinning grindstone. Each time he touched it, he bounced away and sparks blazed in his mind. He reached inside to focus his energies and then launched toward the Void. He hit stone. His brain ached as if it had concussed against his skull. He slumped.
“Seth, do not fight the Void, or it will fight you. It is a primal entity. It senses your hostility.”
David looked up in surprise, but his sight remained frustrated by darkness. Trand’s words were logical and echoed Pharaoh’s lessons. David let his body relax, and slowly he eased the fingers of his mind into the whirling Void. They burned, but they did not skid away. The fingers crept deeper until his hand, and then his wrist was enveloped. He drew upon the Void. Energy, confidence, and power surged. Withdrawing his arm, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead into the Void. He buried his head up to his neck; to breathe became an uncomfortable choking, like he inhaled liquid.
Within the Void, he grinned. He wormed the rest of the way through until the Void cascaded about him.
“I see, Trand. Finally, I see.”
Chapter Thirty
Sam studied the men in the flickering firelight. The orange glow burnished silver hair to gold and deepened the craggy lines of their faces.
The companions hunched, breath misting in the cold. Askari’s expression was grim. Lean in a manner only attainable after decades of physical work, his sinewy body had eliminated all that was not useful; thin skin emphasized knurled muscle.
Sam contemplated the training she had completed, both as an initiate and then as a full member of the Shemsu Seth. Pharaoh’s ranks numbered a thousand hardened men. There could be only one outcome against six old men and a traitor.
They had ridden into the deep desert, away from roads and settlements, to camp at a tiny oasis unknown to any but the companions and Bedouin nomads, a place where, if one dug deep enough, water sprang. The water in Sam’s cup was brown with silt. While journeying through the labyrinth, Faris’s falcon, Syf, had found them, trailing them from above like a hound with a scent. The companions had followed the falcon and while Faris rafted down the underground river, Syf followed in the sky above and led the companions to the Qar tomb on the Giza plateau.
Syf preened and hopped from foot to foot on a rock near Faris, who slept with his head in Tara’s lap.
The companions had provided each of them with a coarse brown robe. After almost a full day beneath ground, the hours of sun and the clothing around their bodies felt luxurious. Sam’s bones ached, and her back wept from its scrapes, but she now relaxed under the blanket of stars. Despite her anxiety over Faris’s injury and the approaching new moon, Sam felt better than she had in many years. Free. She enjoyed the freedom like a condemned man took pleasure in his last meal.
The companions huddled on the far side of the fire. She stirred its coals with a twig. Abu scratched at the dust, running in his dreams.
“What can be done for Faris, Askari?” Tara asked and stroked Faris’s forehead under Syf’s watchful eye.
“Little,” he shrugged. “He requires medical attention, not monks. We haven’t the time to go back to the deir.”
“Can’t you heal him with Fullness?” Sam asked, and a dozen dark eyes fell on her.
“Some of those dead could use the Fullness to aid the healing process, but the Fullness is a psychic power, it draws on our unconscious. With it, we can move objects, comfort, communicate, but not create. Neither the Fullness nor the Void can create or destroy.”
“The Void can destroy,” Sam corrected.
“No, Sam, it cannot,” Askari stated. “It can bash an object against another object, but always the pieces will add to a whole. Creation and destruction is magic, it is the power of the gods.”
“Then what’s the difference between the Void and the Fullness?” Sam asked.
“Sam, are you human or are you animal?”
Sam bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It makes all the difference,” Askari replied solemnly.
“Man, human.” Sam sniffed.
“Man draws from the psychic force of the Fullness. The key differentiator between the Fullness and the Void is conscience. Animals are without conscience. The Void can be used without conscience, the Fullness cannot.”
“That’s all?”
“It is enough. Without conscience there is no empathy, no compassion, nothing that makes us human, and nothing which differentiates us from animals.”
Sam considered what would happen if conscience disappeared. “Chaos,” she whispered. “Chaos would reign without conscience. A psychopathic world.”
Askari nodded. “Chaos is an aspect of the Void.”
“The Shemsu Seth must be destroyed,” Sam said with finality.
“Not destroyed, Sam,” her mother said. “The balance must be retained.”
Sam struck the coals. Sparks rose into the night. “Balance led us here. Balance has lost Faris’s leg.”
The campfire crackled in the ensuing silence. Until now, no one had mentioned that Faris might not keep his leg, but anyone who looked at his blackened foot and the red tendrils that climbed his thigh knew the truth. Askari’s face darkened, and he turned from the fire.
“Balance did not lead us here,” Askari said. “The sisters.”
Something jarred in Sam’s memory, a conversation without faces, like a recording. “How did the Shemsu Seth determine the locations of the vertebrae?” Sam repeated Faris’s question of Tara. “Mother?” Sam demanded.
Tara held her gaze steady and answered: “If the Shemsu Hor had given us power over the Fullness, none would have died.”
Askari stood, his face purple.
Tara’s voice rose over the crackle of fire. “We were the balance before it was stripped from us.”
“No, Sister,” Askari seethed. “You have traded balance for bodies.”
“There is still time,” she said.
Askari’s arm swept over the downcast men.
“The Shemsu Hor let the Fullness languish, let it tarnish in the darkness of your caves. We wish to bring it into the light,” Tara said. “There is still time.”
A companion tugged on Askari’s wrist. It was a sign of how very tired he was that he sat. “Pharaoh doesn’t have the complete Osiris,” the companion said. “He doesn’t know the location of the spinal cord.”
Another memory of her joining wi
th Faris flashed. “No, he does. David lives,” Sam said.
Askari’s gaze swung back to her at the name.
“I killed David,” Sam continued. “I stabbed him through the heart before I jumped into the pit with my mother. He was going to unveil the secret of the tablet, so I killed him. At least I thought I had, but Faris—his memories say he lives, and that they believe him to be the chosen one, the beast.”
Askari’s gaze dropped to the fire; his eyes reflected red and yellow. “The beast … the Qu’ran calls him the Najjal … He was first called Seth. David has a powerful connection to the Void. I felt it as he …” His voice trailed away until only the hiss and pop of coals remained.
Sam recalled David’s embrace of the Void as he had killed the companions at the deir. Sam had saved David from the consuming Void. She had earned Askari’s distrust, as had her mother.
“If we can get to the spinal cord first, we would at least have that,” Sam said into the silence.
“Without the tablet, how are we to know where the final piece resides?” Tara asked.
“Essam.” Askari pointed to a man whose beard was nearly white. “You worked upon the tablet.”
Essam looked up from the coals, his eyes glittered with the few flames that rose and dipped. “It is simple really, we should have expected it.” His voice held a low timbre edged with excitement. “The trick for us, since we lacked the complete backbone, was to find the starting point of the text. The first time we tried the result was meaningless, but then we realized that the script could be read as easliy top down as left to right. We recopied it—”
“Do you know, Essam?” Askari cut in.
Essam nodded. “It’s an inventory of course, and the part attributable to the spinal cord—it was written hidden within the Eye of Horus—and read something like this …” He closed his eyes:
“Osiris sleeps at the center of the world, one eye on Orion and the other on the Pole Star. In the Temple of the Phoenix, he shall be reborn.”
Essam stared around the campfire. “We can find the piece easily enough, but we won’t be able to take it unless we can move millions of tons.” He smiled and watched the others. He avoided Sam’s stare. “The Great Pyramid!” he blurted. “The King’s Chamber, whose star shafts would have pointed to those star systems so many millennia ago, it is the spinal cord. It enervates the Osiris. There, he shall return.”
“It’s a place?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Tara exclaimed. “The Great Pyramid is a geodesic marker, its walls align with the four cardinal points … and it only makes sense that rebirth take place in a pyramid that symbolizes the primordial mound, the Benben.”
Askari regarded her through narrow slits.
“Sorry, but I’m not sure it represents the primordial mound,” Essam stated. “The tablet called it the Temple of the Phoenix. I believe it lies atop the primordial mound.”
“Where the gods were made,” Askari whispered.
“So, Pharaoh has the Osiris. He has the power. We are lost,” Sam stated.
“No,” Askari spoke the word faintly, but all heard. “Not lost. You, Sam. You are the one in the prophecy. You are the corruptible who must put on incorruption.”
“I’m sorry, in another time I might have been a watcher, perhaps a Sister of Isis,” Sam glared at her mother, “but I am no prophet.” Five of the six companions hung their heads. One more disappointment changed little.
Askari stared at Sam until she looked away. “I did not say that you were the Prophet Osiris. You are Wedjat, standing by like the watchers.”
Sam scowled.
“Surely you see that the prophecy has come to fruition,” Askari spoke swiftly. “The Fullness fails. The backbone is assembled. The beast has risen. The Wedjat is—”
“Not found,” Sam interrupted. “If I am the Wedjat, then who is the prophet?”
“That is for the Wedjat to determine,” Askari said.
Sam thought for a moment. “Do any of the ancient texts mention what the prophet will be like?” she asked.
“One,” Askari nodded. “The boy doesn’t speak. He is dumb and will have neither form nor comeliness.”
“What did you say?” Sam met his eyes.
“He won’t speak. He’ll be mute.”
“Tariq?” Sam asked.
“Tariq was no prophet,” her mother said, mouth grim.
“How do you know the prophet will be mute?” Sam questioned.
“Isaiah speaks of it in his prophecies,” Askari explained.
“Pharaoh asked me to kill a boy.” Sam stroked at her cheek’s raised network of veins. “I will fetch your chosen one and bring him to you.” Sam stood, and no one made any motion to stop her as she packed a few loaves of bread and took a waterskin.
“How will I know?” Sam asked Askari, suddenly uncertain.
“The Wedjat will know.”
She snorted.
“Islamic tradition teaches that only true believers will know the false prophets. You will know the true prophet if you believe.”
Sam stooped to kiss Faris. His lips were cool. “Take care of him, Mother,” Sam ordered. It was clear to all that the relationship between mother and daughter was dependent on Faris remaining alive. Tara nodded.
“Take my horse, Sam,” Askari stated. “And these.” He produced a string of three aten, untied it, and handed two to Sam with a roll of bills. “Go with haste.”
Sam inspected the sundiscs and judged their weight. “I have never used one,” she said.
“Reach for the Fullness. The aten is an extension of you and Re,” Askari explained. Sam stood and clutched the aten. She took a practice swing and shouted, “Re riseth!” The shout was lost in the pop of an ember. Words spoken, not felt.
As a falling man reaches for his crutch, Sam reached for the Fullness. She touched its blistered surface and withdrew.
She gritted her teeth and reached again. She threw the aten. It glinted in the light of the moon, its metal flaring. The disc clanked and rebounded from a rock. Askari’s gaze followed the aten’s path.
“Go,” Askari said. “Time is short indeed.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Sam observed the boy from the same rocky hide she had used as cover a week before. The boy looked back at her, his eyes wide and legs rooted.
Black hair downed his upper lip and cheeks. The shaman’s son was close to becoming a man, an age when the Christian Jesus had argued with the moneychangers in a temple and when Horus had come to power. But the boy’s shoulders sloped and his lips stuck out petulantly.
A falcon called, and Sam glanced up. She hid from it. At first three falcons had tailed her, and then two. The last still circled and screeched.
A woman stepped from the hut. She was tall and slim with a neck like a swan. A man followed. His pronounced cheekbones slanted at an angle equal to his sharp nose and he smiled up at Sam. Sam slid around the rock and picked her way down the hard-packed path.
“Peace be upon you.” The man stammered over the Arabic introduction. Sam inclined her head and shook the man’s hand. His grip was warm and assured. The woman hugged Sam, a lingering embrace scented with ginger and cinnamon. Tightness about the woman’s eyes suggested she neared tears.
“And upon you be peace,” Sam stated, unable to share the shaman’s smile or the hug. She had returned through a mass of graves. In her nostrils, the woman’s spicy scent competed with the smell of fresh churned soil. A shovel leaned against the a mud wall. The man turned to his son and cupped his hands together, holding them palms-up to Sam. The boy stepped forward.
“Zarab.” The shaman touched the boy’s chest.
“Sam,” Sam replied. Beneath the shine of the boy’s burnished eyes, no fire burned. They were as vacuous as the night sky. Sam br
iefly shut her eyes. Her two-day journey had punished horse and rider. By sight, she knew the boy was no prophet.
“I seek a boy, a man, a powerful man, but mute and deaf,” Sam said. Her thoughts drifted to Tariq again, but he was not mute, only deaf.
His smile gone, the shaman placed his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Come.”
He shooed a goat and pushed Sam’s head down as they stooped to enter the hut. The interior was larger than the exterior hinted. Rolled mats of woven grass leaned against a mud-brick wall. A curtain ran the length of the wall opposite shelves of metal pots and bowls. A crude child’s doll and a hollowed tree stump for mashing root vegetables and berries into pulp and jam completed the single room’s furnishings. Static from a small black radio showered the room. He clicked it off.
The shaman motioned for Sam to stand still. She hunched under the low thatch while the man pulled a shelf from the wall. He set one end of the wood plank on top of the hollowed stump and the other on a cinderblock drawn from under the curtain. As he worked, the shaman murmured a pleasant earthy hum. Sam sensed him draw from both the Void and the Fullness, but without realizing it, as if he merely collected dust-motes shed by the two powers.
The shaman stepped back to inspect his creation and grunted, directing with his hands for Sam to step on the plank. Sam had to squat to climb upon it. It wobbled. When she had found her balance, she looked up and stared at the yellowed curtain. The man tugged the drapery aside.
Two mirrors angled toward her. In the right, Sam stood straight surrounded by a white backdrop. Her eyes shone as molten gold fanned white hot by wind that tugged at her reflection’s robes. In the left-hand mirror, David stood, surrounded by darkness. His eyes glowed sick orange-yellow.
David scanned from left to right, gaze sweeping like a lighthouse beam. Suddenly, he stared at Sam. Coal eyes flared, and his mouth twisted. Lightning flashed. The mirrors shattered. Glass blew outward and Sam’s face erupted with fire.
24 Bones Page 21
