by Alan Baxter
He reaches the inner gate, puffing and sweating.
It is night. It is dark. He does not want to go out there, even bearing with him the fire of Ut-Aten in one of the sun-disk candle holders. The blackness looms so large, so ominous and deep.
But, Sennu reminds himself, it will not last for long. Soon, the sun will shine eternal. Soon, the serpent will be banished forever into chaos, and order will rule all.
Comforted by these thoughts, he passes through the gate.
Once, the pillars supporting the roofs of the walkways edging the courtyard were statue-images of the old beast-headed gods; their features have been chipped and chiseled into anonymity, awaiting the sculptors who will remake them in more appropriate design.
As the work continues.
As the money is brought in.
As the fame and power of Sefut-Aten rises, gaining strength.
Everywhere are piles of materials, skeletal cages of scaffolding, stacks of bricks, slabs of stone, beams and winches, casks of oil and lime and river-water, half-hewn obelisks, levers, ladders, tools. A crude and temporary arrangement of slats and rope serves as the outer gate until the massive bronze one can be finished, the massive bronze gate with its sun-disk of gold and rays of precious gems, which will surely dazzle and humble all who come to this place.
Sennu’s feet grind and crunch on grit and gravel, pebbles, dust, debris. He crosses the courtyard – it will be a lush garden when all is said and done, perhaps with a menagerie to rival those of the greatest Nubian chiefs – and enters that section of the structure given over to the royal living quarters.
Pharaoh has been calling again for her.
His Lily-of-the-Nile, his flower, his golden lotus.
Personally, privately, Sennu considers the woman to be something of a she-jackal: clever, opportunistic and sly. But, even in his priestly celibacy, he cannot deny her striking beauty… and she is a devout worshiper of Ut-Aten, her influence even having helped convert Pharaoh himself to the true faith.
Her chambers are guarded by two of her own hand-picked warriors, who wear leopard-skins, gold pectoral collars set with polished onyx, and very little else. They wield long, thick, stout staves capped with sharp-edged disks of burnished bronze.
The Lily-of-the-Nile claims that they are eunuchs. No one dares suggest otherwise.
They smirk as Sennu scurries past. He wakes a round-faced, round-bodied slavewoman, who goes to fetch her mistress.
Left briefly alone, feeling out of place and out of sorts, he wanders the room. It is opulent. There are palm fronds and feathered fan-plumes, hangings, cushions, decorative chests and coffers. He frowns briefly over a shelf of small jade figurines, but they are merely trinkets.
The sudden creeping sensation of no longer being alone, of being watched, makes him turn. Too fast, the candle jitters in his hand so that its light flickers.
The child stands there. His pudgy body is half-hidden by the shadows of a luxurious reclining-couch, but his wide and wide-spaced eyes catch the candle’s flame like yet more polished mirrors. Unlike most boys his age, his head is not shaven into a side-lock; his hair tumbles in sleep-tousled ringlets to his naked, dimpled shoulders.
Sennu twitches. He has never been much at ease in the company of children. This one, least of all. Soft of feature, full of lip, weak of chin, bow-legged, with smooth and chubby little fingers…
They look at each other. Man and boy, priest and prince.
Silence hangs between them, a thick and tangible thing, growing and swelling, the gas-gut bloat of a waterlogged corpse, a hippopotamus left to rot in tepid river shallows.
Where is that wretched slavewoman? What is taking her so long?
He manufactures what is meant to be a reassuring smile, wondering which of them he’s trying to reassure.
Those wide and wide-set eyes stare, unblinking, filled with mirrored fire. A fat pink tongue squirms between full lips. One of his chubby fingers pokes into his navel. His other arm, he slowly raises, and extends. Something dangles from the child’s hand. A length of cord, a strip of cloth, some sort of toy, Sennu thinks.
As he lifts the candle to shed a better light, he sees it for what it is. Long and limp and slender, a dead snake held by the tail.
Its fine scales are green and black, delicate patterning fading to a paler underbelly. Its head… its head is misshapen, squashed, oozing. Like an overripe date or fig that has been stepped on, or squeezed in a strong fist.
Sennu’s mouth and throat are dry, desert-dry, sandstorm-dry. He fears his knees will give way.
Then, from behind him, he hears voices and movement. Pharaoh’s Lily-of-the-Nile glides in, pinning closed a garment of linen so sheer it makes the gesture of modesty moot. She has taken the time to apply fresh cosmetics. The slavewoman waddles after her, muttering, offering up choices of rings and bangles from a jewelry case.
“He has a snake,” Sennu says, pointing. It is not what he’d intended. It is hardly a proper greeting. The words just… fall from him, like a crumbling rill of sand.
Lily-of-the-Nile sways past and bends, reed-supple, over the boy. She somehow gives the impression of stroking his tousled hair without touching him at all.
“Yes,” she says, all but crooning. “I have one brought for him every afternoon.”
Sennu gapes, incredulous. “But why?”
“We kill it at the moment of the sunset, don’t we, my shining little god? To show the demons of the night they cannot hope to harm us, no, oh no, they cannot.”
The child giggles, lifts his arm again – the dead snake trailing – and licks a smear of congealed gore from the back of his hand.
It is all Sennu can do not to shudder.
* * *
“Do you also remember,” Sia whispered, settling her palm against Khemet’s cheek, “how Mahenef would speak his plans of the future? How he and you would marry Tanit and I, and become true brothers at last?”
“Sia...” he said, resisting the urge to lean into her caress.
“Before she died – it was the bone-weakness, same as our Uncle Thut – she requested her sarcophagus be placed alongside Mahenef’s in his tomb. To be united with him in the next world, ba and ka and soul and body.”
“I had heard.” His voice was not quite steady. “May they be forever happy in the houses of Osiris.”
“While here we two still are, yet among the living.”
How beautiful she was, how confident and sure. He had never, until this moment, so regretted his decisions. By Ma’at, by Isis, she was lovely. And to have a woman look at him, touch him without apprehension… he did not like to think how long it had been since that had happened, since he’d enjoyed the pleasures of such company without paying a price… even then usually to be met with stoic endurance …
“The last time we saw each other,” she said, “we shared a kiss.”
He shut his eyes and did allow his cheek to press against her palm. Her skin was as warm and fine as oasis sand. He savored her scent, yearned to part his lips and taste her unique salt-sweetness upon his tongue.
“It was a clumsy thing, that kiss, and awkward,” she went on. “Our noses bumped. I couldn’t stop blushing, and you were so anxious we might be seen. Do you remember that, as well?”
“Vividly,” he said.
“I wonder.” Her murmur, a soft evening breeze rich with promise… the nearness of her… “Would we be better at it now?”
He nearly groaned. “Sia…” he said again, struggling for word, for thought, for action. “I’ve already given your mother my answer. You do not need to—”
From caress to stinging, ringing slap!
* * *
They find their missing seventh at the end of a long trail of blood. As if having dragged or been dragged through the dirt. Struggling, slithering, a painstaking crawl.
Scales and skin slashed open.
A bronze spearhead lodged deep.
Organs and bone.
The spear-shaft snapped off, broken, trailing.
Nearby is a sentry, his throat a garish red weal, swollen and angry—
—the serpent strangles, squeezes—
—but somehow eluding, escaping for a moment. Getting a chance to strike back. Desperation and luck, raw luck. Enough to wound, wound badly, even fatally.
Not, however, enough to save himself.
The sentry is dead. Smothered, suffocated. Face pushed into mud. Held there. Held there as clay clogged his nose, filled his mouth, covered his eyes. The scent of dank silt. The gritty taste, the feel, wet sand in his teeth. The hot, coughing pain of damp earth-clots being sucked into his lungs.
The serpent steals breath.
The serpent swallows life.
To take his killer with him is the best he has been able to do.
Which is far better than many could say, given the circumstances. Far better than most.
The sentry was also at least unable to raise an alarm. Their seventh has done that much, has kept the swiftness and the silence. Has kept to the purpose, the mission.
Now they know. The question is answered, the mystery solved.
Honoring the loss of one of their own must come later.
This is their time, in the dark hours.
The sacred fire burns bright in its tower. A tiny sun, arrogant, insolent, defiant. A bronze beacon behind the temple-palace walls.
They make for it.
Swift and silent, scaled and sleek, the serpents of the night.
No other unfortunates get in their way. No workers and no witnesses; no whores, drunkards, or slaves.
Fanged and ready. Shadow to shadow.
Toward the temple, the tower. Walls and scaffolding surround palace houses and courtyards. The shoddy wooden temporary gate is guarded, an open-walled hut to each side and four men to each hut. Not sentries here but soldiers, again in tanned-hide breastplates, with shields and curved khopesh-blades.
These guards are alert, not dozing, not gambling, not telling jokes and lies about women. Lanterns shed broad circles of light, overlapping on the great flat slab-stones in front of the gate.
The serpent waits to strike.
Glances. Gestures. Flinty heads nod understanding.
Two, the stealthiest, move forward. Move to the very fringe-edges of the light. Their fangs have been withdrawn; sometimes the serpent must strike from afar.
With a whisper-soft hiss and snap, no louder than the click-whir of a scarab’s wings, each finds its mark. Not stinging vulnerable flesh but snuffing, blink-fast, the lantern-flames from their wicks.
Blackness drops like a weight. The guards gasp in surprise.
It is a last breath to be stolen. There is no time to cry out, no time to draw their weapons. The serpents are already upon them.
* * *
Khemet’s eyes flew open at the slap. His nostrils flared and his body tensed.
He caught her by the wrist almost before the sharp crack finished ringing in his ears, the stinging heat still spreading on his face.
Sia did not flinch. Her fierce gaze held and challenged his.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?” she demanded. “Is that what you think of me?”
The serpent coils, crushes.
His fingers coiled, poised to crush. To crush her fine and fragile bones. To crack and grind them in his fist.
“You think I would seduce you on my mother’s behalf?” she went on.
The serpent…
No.
Not here. Not now. This is not the serpent’s place.
“No,” he said, aloud, and relaxed his grip. “That is not what I think. Sia, I am sorry.”
She yanked her arm away. “Though you might be right to think so. Why not whore myself for her purpose, instead of being whored for Pharaoh’s?”
Khemet almost asked what she meant by that, but then he understood. He closed his eyes again, exhaling through clenched teeth, letting his shoulders fall.
“I am the eldest surviving daughter.” She uttered a bitter laugh. “It would make me queen of all Egypt, the dynasty secure.”
“Yes,” he said heavily. “Yes, it would.”
* * *
Fangs plunge and impale, piercing lungs, piercing hearts. Muscles curl and constrict, tightening, powerful, inexorable.
Windpipes and voice-boxes collapse in muted crunches of cartilage. The guards grope feebly, kick with futile struggles as they strangle. Gristle crackles in their necks. Bodies fall with meaty thumps.
In a nearby hut, a dog whuffs. Once, and twice. A third is interrupted by a man’s impatient, drowsy grumble. The dog whines plaintively.
Then all again is silent.
The sacred fire in the tower burns on, unabated. Those who tend it go on doing so, chanting, oblivious to danger.
For now.
To raise the gate would mean risking noise, its wooden creak and rattle, the squeal of pulley and rope. The serpents go up it instead, swarm up it with fluid ease, up and over, dropping soundlessly into the courtyard.
They flow across it like currents of dark water, parting and passing around piles of bricks and cut stone, mounds of dirt and gravel, beams, casks, straw-bales, and the disfigured visages of gods.
Swiftness. Silence.
Dark shapes within the larger darkness of the night.
First, they will strike at the barracks. In that long, low-ceilinged room, more guards sleep on woven mats. Unarmed, naked, unprepared, presenting no challenge to the sinking fangs, to the strangling coils. From there, they will go to the tower—
But, before any of that can be done, a moving firelight flicker strengthens brighter in a doorway.
* * *
“However...” said Sia, “I am the eldest surviving daughter anyway. No matter who I marry, would I not still be queen?”
Khemet glanced at her, feeling even more uncertain, as if their conversation took place upon some deceptive stretch of quicksand.
He almost, in that instant, yearned for the dark caverns below the desert, carved in sunless secrecy by age-old underground rivers. There, at the hidden stronghold the Sons of Apophis called home… there, where the immense black avatar basked and rested, accepting offerings of flower-garlanded heifers with gilded nubs of horn… there, where he had lived, had trained… where their ways, their rules, were simple and easily understood…
The serpent…
The serpent, yes, the Serpent. Apophis, Apep, the Maw of Night, Eternal Devourer of the Sun.
The serpent swallows life.
His life as well? Khemet’s own? Freely given, offered up like any other sacrifice, offered and accepted?
And why not? He’d had no close family – a soldier father long since dead, a mother who’d put him in the care of an aging aunt when she remarried, a stepfather and various half-siblings he barely knew. The aging aunt, a cosmetician to the ladies of Pharaoh’s court, had done her best to raise him, and her favored status afforded him much freedom and indulgence. Even she was gone now, having succumbed to the damp-lung before the war in which Mahenef had died.
So, indeed, why should he not have taken on the Scales and Fangs and Coils?
It seemed, at the time, a reasonable decision. One he could anticipate little cause to regret. Although he had learned no other trade but battle, the armies did not want him, believing unluck was his shadow. Likewise, he would have no wife or children to support. And, despite a princely education gained at Mahenef’s side, his aunt had left only a scant inheritance once her final arrangements were complete.
Might as well make the most of his solitude and ominous reputation. Might as well pledge himself to the Serpent.
Yet now, here he was… and Sia… if she was suggesting what it seemed she was suggesting…
Their youthful infatuation, her brother’s joking plans, and that single fumbling awkward kiss of bumped noses and blushing… those belonged to another time, a gone time, another world. Didn’t they?
The way she touched him, though. The way she looked at him and stroked his face. The soft warmth like fine, smooth, heated sand in her caress, her voice, her gaze.
How could she want him, knowing what he was? Knowing what her own mother had commanded him to do?
This business dark and grim, as she had phrased it.
If he did not – if he refused, or failed – then any hope with Sia would be gone. But if he did, if he succeeded…
There was no crime greater than the shedding of royal blood. The bloodline of Pharaoh was the bloodline of the gods.
Ordinary murder was more than wickedness enough.
Her words and his, speaking of Mahenef and Tanit… united with him in the next world, ba and ka and soul and body… may they be forever happy in the houses of Osiris.
And Neferisu’s words as well… he will be waiting for you in the Seven Halls.
No crime greater than the shedding of royal blood. No crime more certain to weigh a heart heavier than stone in the balance-scales held by Anubis. Instead of the houses of Osiris, it would be the monstrous Ammit. It would be utter obliteration.
Conflicting thoughts and emotions seethed in him, roiled like a pit of snakes, churned like the primal seas of chaos.
With a sudden, violent cry and gesture, he dashed them all from his mind. He stood, jaw clenched, hands raised, fingers stiffly splayed, air hissing harsh and rapid through his teeth.
The serpent…
“Khemet?”
She took a step, began to reach for him.
…coils, crushes.
He seized her, pulled her to him, coiled his arms around her body, crushed her to his chest—
