24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “Give me the Spine of Osiris,” the crone hissed. She sailed up the stairs, infused with Void. “The Sisters will keep the balance. We put Osiris together once …”

  Sam, holding the last trace of Fullness, saw their goal. An image of a black sister who wielded the Osiris filled her mind—the rise of the Isis cult.

  David’s power faded. Blood leaked slowly from his chest, the staff having cauterized the wound. His eyes dimmed.

  Sam released the souls and minds of the gathered thousands.

  Confusion and then pain twisted in David’s darkening gaze.

  Sam lifted the blade clutched in her palm.

  Breath, hot and quick, fell on Sam’s neck. The crone’s dagger prodded the base of Sam’s back, naked, for her robes had burned away.

  “Do not,” the Mother Isis ordered.

  Sam’s knife dipped to Seth’s throat, and the crone stabbed. The blade bit deep.

  Sam kicked backward and the crone flew, traveling farther from the ground as the steep steps descended. Her flailing arms sent the bloodied knife ricocheting from the wall.

  Sam fell to all fours as pain surged up her back. But she dared not reach for the Void to quench the sting.

  David, freed of the Fullness, edged up the steps.

  The crone slammed onto the stairs, rolled twice, and lay still.

  Tara ascended to crouch silently beside her mistress.

  Sand streamed from the ceiling and stuck to Sam’s weeping flesh.

  At the top of the stair, Seth’s laughter was an obscene throaty gurgle.

  Zarab waved his arms, and Sam peered down to where he stood at the gallery’s landing. His gestures were awkward. He was trying to say something.

  “You. Careful. Up. Up.” He signaled and repeated the last gesture.

  At the height of the gallery, Seth’s eyes rolled like a threatened camel’s. Blood oozed from his chest, the wound’s puckered lips purple-black in the dull Void-light that still smoldered in his eyes. Beside him, a stone box teetered—the sarcophagus.

  Sam clawed upward. The gold stem of the Osiris staff clanged against each step. She tried to draw strength from it, but it was lifeless in her grip.

  Four tons of rock plummeted.

  She dodged to the side, but below, her mother struggled with the body of the crone.

  “Mother—” Sam wheezed. Sam dipped into the Void and shoved her mother out of the sarcophagus’ path. The crone rolled down the stairs in the way of the coffin.

  Sam’s scream crescendoed into the gallery’s reaches. Its echo roared out to the world. The Void claimed her. She twisted and shook with rage and with power.

  The great crypt cinched the crone into the cracks of the stairs; it snapped bones and sheared away flesh. The crone’s skull tore from her neck and shot from her veil to clomp down to the stair’s base. The sarcophagus crashed to lean against the exit, Zarab’s leg twisted beneath it at an awkward kilter. A steady shower of sand sifted from the ceiling blocks and spouted from cracks in the walls.

  In her animal wrath, Sam turned to Seth and charged.

  “The prophecy, Sam, remember,” the weak thread of her mother’s call came from below, her voice small in the noise of Void.

  Something clawed at Sam’s mind, and in the clutches of Void, she shoved it away. She waggled her head.

  David was before her, fear and madness in his eyes, but he looked at the bottom of the gallery, at the body and face of the crone.

  “Grandmama,” he whispered.

  In the base of Sam’s brain, fury connected with injustice. The staff shook as she raised the Osiris to strike. But her eyes fell on David’s inverted mark of the Shemsu Hor, and she remembered long ago watching at the gate of the convent as a boy was branded.

  David wilted under the threat of the spine.

  Sam saw a child, as she had been a child, manipulated and tortured by prophecy. She looked at the weapon, her humanity raging against the Void that claimed her. The heart had ceased to throb, but a hint of light remained, a red pupil in the faceted pink orb. She gazed into the backbone’s light—Benu’s egg?

  “If the scarab’s shell is unbroken … the Benu will be lost,” she whispered. “The egg.”

  “Re riseth,” Sam shouted and struck the heart of Osiris against the entry to the King’s Chamber. The Heart splintered and she paused, listening to a deafening silence.

  The light of the heart sizzled like a directionless firework, spinning and rebounding back and forth, cutting Sam and David’s bonds with the Void. It hurtled past David, who slumped on the top step with his punctured lung sucking air through his side. The heart accelerated, entered the King’s Chamber, and fired up the shaft to the stars. It exploded into the heavens. A cheer swelled across the Giza plateau as the seed of the Fullness was freed.

  Sam called: “The Benu found, the scarab’s shell broken, the Hall’s of Ma’at shall open. We are reborn. But the gates … the prophet.” She turned stiffly. Her flesh blazed with pain. The only light in the gallery was what escaped around the bulk of the sarcophagus. In its diffuse glow, the prophet’s broken leg was visible. Sam reached for the Fullness to staunch her agony, and although it lay warm and complete, she could not touch it.

  “No,” she said.

  Her mother stared upward, brow furled and mouth twisted in sadness. “The gates are closed.”

  Without the strength of Void, not daring to reach for it again, Sam sagged and crawled backwards down the steps. The priceless stick of the spine scraped against the granite and sand-choked stairs as she descended. Cries of the dying filtered through the pyramid’s entry. The battle resumed. The Sisters and Shemsu Hor, although freed of their Void bonds, still had mundane means of warfare and protection.

  “I’m sorry, Samiya,” Tara said and grasped at her daughter as she passed.

  Sam jerked away and crawled beyond.

  Beneath the sarcophagus, Zarab breathed in short gasps. The luminescence, which had cloaked him when the Fullness was freed, decayed. Water from the empty vessel of the Eucharist, bent and folded at his hip, had sprayed his face.

  Sam tossed the staff and pushed at the stone crypt. Sand from the ceiling clogged her eyes and mouth. Her back and leg seared. The coffin did not move. She knelt and sobbed.

  “I failed,” she told the dull, pain-filled eyes of Zarab. She shifted and slipped his head onto her lap. Darkness crowded the periphery of her vision. From that angle she could see that the corner of the coffin had crushed his leg. Pain and the heady guilt of Faris’s leg consumed her. She looked for the throb of Void and found it. Her skin burned and itched.

  Her mother stumbled upward to David, sliding on the sandy slope that now covered the stairs.

  “I have failed, but I do not have to fail in this,” Sam whispered. The light that surrounded Zarab dimmed. She looked into the Void. It stood agape for her, and hungry. She reached for it, but stopped.

  Zarab’s dark eyes followed the path of a golden snake. Sam stiffened. The spine had disappeared under the corner of the tomb. Sam’s stomach churned as it slid under Zarab’s back. She pushed him forward. The spine’s diamond head lifted and then struck. It punctured his flesh, and clambered upward. Zarab convulsed with each rung of vertebra the staff climbed. Finally, it protruded like the fin of an eel. Zarab’s eyes blazed full and bright.

  When Sam laughed, it racked her chest and echoed strangely in the gallery.

  The stone coffin tumbled away. He was free.

  Zarab rose to his feet, his leg whole and healed.

  Unbidden tears tumbled from Sam’s eye. When he turned, she could not see Zarab. An inner light blasted from his pores so that his hand was a ray that touched her cheek.

  A sense of peace filled her, and her conscience lightened. The ache of her leg and back
eased. A balm spread over her skin and she saw it smooth and clean. She knew that if she tried to connect, the Fullness would be waiting.

  “No,” she said, as her torn eye began to heal.

  The light retracted, and she lamented its loss.

  “I need to remember,” she added.

  The radiant figure drifted past, as silent as the sun, and left the temple. The Prophet Osiris returned.

  Sand covered Sam’s shins.

  At the top of the gallery, her mother crawled on hands and knees.

  Drifts of sand already blocked the opening to the King’s Chamber. A hand protruded from the pile and waved back and forth.

  Sam started up the slope. The sand beat at her back, and her knees slipped in the fine grains as she inched upward.

  Her mother had reached David and pulled at him with her arm half-buried. All sound faded but for the steady hiss of the sand that filled the chamber and Tara’s calls. Sam couldn’t understand her mother’s hysterical cries as she heaved, face pressed against the growing dune.

  “Mother,” Sam shouted, but it was no use, she shouted at Tara’s buried head. Sam wondered just how far her mother would go to save the man. Sam stood over her and grabbed under her armpits. Tara slid free of the sand, but left David below.

  “No,” she shouted. “My son!”

  Sam slipped, legs buried to her knees, the ceiling neared. Below, only the lip of the sarcophagus was unburied. Her mother screamed as she dug. Sand usurped the hole as quickly as she dug it out.

  “David, my son. Dawid. My dear Dawid.”

  “Son?”

  Her mother turned to meet Sam’s confused stare. The sorrow and anguish in Tara’s eyes broke through the rage that ruptured in Sam’s heart. She saw a shattered mother, a woman who had made terrible choices.

  “My brother.” Sam leapt forward. She stretched both her hands to the roof and grabbed the reins of the Fullness and the Void. The pyramid shook and sand cascaded over her shoulders.

  “My brother!”

  Tara jumped back, eyes wide and mouth open as she stared up into the immortal figure of her daughter turned Wedjat.

  Sam’s hands shot forward and sand plumed, leaving a crater and a half-buried David. Tara scrambled forward, embraced her son, and hauled him down the steps. Energy, blue-black and golden, shimmered against the twin waves of sand. When David was free, the walls collapsed and Sam turned to part the channel of sand down the stairwell. David leaned on Tara as they descended through the corridor. Sam’s hands stroked gritty walls, and, as she passed, they fell inward and blocked return.

  Sam exited the pyramid.

  Tara cradled her son at the entry.

  Sam recalled her mother’s story of her dream and the comforting older Sister of Isis, and she understood how twisted the sisters’—her mother’s—strategy had become. Tara had given up her son to be raised by his father, and then by strangers, and her daughter to be raised by evil. David had fallen farthest from her nest, but myth had returned him.

  “Wedjat,” David called between breaths.

  Sam leaned closer.

  “For a time, I ruled the world. For a time.” He smiled; the Void was dim in him.

  Tara brushed hair from her son’s cheek. “Now we can rule together, Sam,” Tara said as tears glimmered in her eyes. “All of us, a family again.”

  Sam sensed Tara’s use of the twining to calm and control her emotions.

  “And you, the Mother Isis,” Sam stated.

  Tara nodded.

  “Never, Mother.”

  Tara’s eyes flashed.

  “I follow him, and they follow me,” Sam stated.

  “Wedjat,” a cry from the battlefield lifted.

  Companions’ sundiscs blazed with Fullness. The silver scimitars of the sisters hacked, wielding both Void and Fullness equally. At the head of their army, the bishops commanded battalions of Copts armed with shovels and hoes, which prodded a wounded Sobek and ushered aimless crocodiles away. The last of the Shemsu Seth ran to the necropolis; those not captured by soldiers and police escaped into the tunnels and the darkness.

  Zarab was no longer mute or deaf. On the same platform where Pharaoh and Seth had stood, and before a gathered crowd, he preached of unity, of truth and strength in the collective. As people in homes across the world watched and believed, the Fullness grew in power. The Void waned.

  Dawn threatened the horizon, but to Sam’s relief it was clear of the gathered thousands of souls. She let go the Void and Fullness and fatigue wrapped about her shoulders. She pulled a cloak from a dead sister and huddled in the cloth.

  A wisp of Void drifted past Sam’s gaze, a vestige of her connection, and she wearily rose to complete her final task.

  Sam trudged through the tunnels below Cairo. Even with her injuries healed, her body ached and her head lolled. The broken Shemsu Seth did not hinder her passage as the police or army might have. Through the City of the Dead and then back into the life of Cairo, she pushed herself.

  The blank moon set and Re rose again.

  When she reached Coptic Cairo and her childhood home, she stepped into the room that had once quartered her mentor. In the early light, Faris lay ashen on the bed. His fingers clawed and bunched at soaked sheets.

  For a long time, Sam knelt at his side and watched him growl. Faris would not stop, wouldn’t allow his thirst for blood to be quenched, like the Sekhmet of old. A bloody tear oozed from Sam’s missing eye.

  Pills from Faris’s bottle of pain medication tinkled into a cup. Sam crushed them into a powder and, with a spoon, blended the result with honey.

  Faris licked at the coated spoon as the ancient Sekhmet had lapped from a pond dyed the color of blood.

  Sam stroked his forehead.

  He nuzzled into her palm. When his eyes flicked briefly open, they held an animal’s patient trust. He kissed her hand.

  Her tears, clear and tainted, dripped onto the twisted bedspread. She sobbed and threw herself across his chest. His arms wrapped about her.

  First, his breathing slowed and then his heartbeat. Finally his grip loosened. She listened to the morning chirp of birds and the buzz of traffic beyond Coptic Cairo’s gates.

  Sunlight through the window draped itself across her shoulders.

  ‘I have thwarted the chance of Seth, the mighty one of strength. Hail thou who makest pleasant the world and who watch over the babe in his cot when he next cometh forth unto thee.’

  -Egyptian Book of the Dead

  Epilogue

  “Sandra, hello? I understand you have a special pledge?”

  “Mmm–hmm, yes, Father John,” the old lady’s voice burst across the prayer line.

  “Go ahead.” He smiled even though he was in a hellish mood. The second installment of the Pharaoh’s five hundred thousand had not cleared, and it would take many kind-old-ladies to pay for a prime-time network spot—five thousand to be exact.

  “A miracle, Father, my cat … You remember Jingles? … He was dying of cancer. And … well … I was praying last night for that nice Pharaoh fellow who was so generous …”

  Father John’s face darkened.

  “And this warmth came over me, this feeling of … I don’t know … goodness … no that’s not it ... ecstasy! Yes—Jingles is healed, Father. I just wanted to …”

  “Alleluia,” he tried, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Another hundred dollars and all my prayers. Thank you.”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart, bye now,” Father John said. He sighed and waited for his earbud to announce the next caller.

  “I hate cats,” the earbud complained and then put the caller through.

  END

  Acknowledgements

  It may take a village to raise a child
but that’s nothing when compared to this book. In the development of 24 Bones I am indebted to many, many people.

  Deena Fisher for her criticism, editing, support and artistic prowess. To friends, David Ain, Chris Pannell, Michael McCarthy, Kendra Brown, Gabrielle Wilson, for their comments and encouragement in equal measure. To Martin Stiff, what a great cover. And finally to Catherine Adams of Inkslinger Editing, you are indeed amazing.

  I am also indebted to the writings of Tom Harpur, James M. Robinson, Jean Doresse, Gawdat Gabra, Dr. Robert M. Schoch, Jill Kamil, Elaine Pagels, Dr. Carl Jung, and for the wonderful database at: www.sacred-texts.com. In Egypt, thanks to my guide, Michael Valentino, and all of the guards that let me do crazy things without too much baksheesh. (Try humming while lying in King Chamber’s sarcophagus, truly a transcendent experience!) Thanks to the authors who have mentored me, Cathy Vasas-Brown, John Terpstra, and Paul Quarrington. As well as to the Inkbots whose support has been remarkable.

  To my family for bestowing on me a restless spirit and the opportunity to travel. To all of my daughters, whose father’s time they forego in lieu of writing, I am grateful. Last, but never least, first reader and editor, greatest supporter, best friend and love of my life, Andrea.

  About the author

  After crewing ships in the Antarctic and the Baltic Sea and some fun in venture capital, Michael anchored himself (happily) to a marriage and a boatload of kids. Now he injects his adventurous spirit into his writing with brief respites for research into the jungles of Sumatra and Guatemala, the ruins of Egypt and Tik’al, paddling the Zambezi and diving whatever cave or ocean reef will have him. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers and SF Canada, and the author of Assured, Destruction, 24 Bones, The Sand Dragon, Hurakan, Ruination and several award winning graphic novels for young adults. Find out more about him on his website.