Heart of the Gods

by Valerie Douglas

  To his surprise Ky felt a pang of jealousy to know his alter-ego had been loved so deeply that love had lasted for millennia and that she grieved for the loss of him still.

  It wasn’t hard to take pity on her, though, her sorrow was real.

  Very gently, Ky said, “He fell in battle, we think. It was quick. That much we do know, from the archives, the texts we’ve translated.”

  If you knew how to read the hints in the texts it wasn’t difficult. If they said he’d been carried from the field, then he would have been grievously wounded. If they said he’d died three days after the battle then he’d been mortally wounded and took three days to die.

  However, they’d said he’d been lost on the battlefield and so it was there he’d died, likely quickly.

  Tears shimmered and a look very like relief, like gratitude, washed over the expressive face he’d come to know so well.

  Raissa looked up to the stone features above her. “You resemble him, you know…”

  She’d never said it to him directly, but she knew she needed to say it, and he needed to hear the truth of it.

  Something inside Ky went still.

  “Do I?” he said, evenly.

  It wasn’t exactly news, people had been comparing them almost all his life.

  She smiled a little, her eyes wistful. “Yes. It’s striking. You could be brothers. It was difficult that first day. I had to remind myself you weren’t the same man. You have so many of the same qualities I loved in him. Both of you are good men, strong men, warriors each in your own right. Brave, brilliant, dedicated. Handsome…”

  Oddly, something inside him began to ease.

  Deliberately, Raissa turned to look at him. “You are not Khai.”

  It wasn’t a denial or a comparison. Simply a fact.

  “He was all warrior. You are poet and warrior both. You are your own self, a different man for a different time. He was one of the best men I have ever known. So are you.”

  Looking back up into the still stone face, Raissa said in wonder, “I never knew why he loved me, it was so difficult for us. I was a farm girl who became a mercenary and then a slave when I was captured. I was so far beneath him and then there was Kamenwati, who owned me until Isis took me into her service. We had so much set against us. Despite it all, he loved me.”

  Watching her it was easy to see why, he could understand how Khai had loved her so deeply, so passionately he’d displayed the empty place beside him for all to see.

  It was there in the depth of her grief for the man she’d loved all those millennia ago. It was there in the woman who had thrust Komi out of the line of fire without a thought or care for herself or what she might lose… One duty had been paramount over any other―protect the innocent.

  And it was there in the eyes of the woman who had come back to face him, to face them, knowing what awaited her.

  “There is a carving,” he said, quietly, “of you with your hand on a lion’s head. I’ve always suspected it was his.”

  She looked at him, her blue eyes stricken, and took a small shuddering breath.

  He had it still. It would have cost him his job, his career, if anyone knew of it. It belonged in a museum, but it had always felt as if it were his by right.

  There were questions to which he still needed answers.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked.

  She went so still he wasn’t certain for a moment she was breathing. Knowing what she was, did she even breathe?

  He looked at her steadily.

  If nothing else, Raissa knew she owed him the truth.

  “Tell you I was a three thousand year old mummy?” she said ironically and laughed with wry humor, tilted her head, lifted an eyebrow and looked at him. “Would you have believed me if I had?”

  “No,” Ky admitted, honestly. “Probably not.”

  She sighed and nodded. “I could have proved it but it would have been difficult. Even so, I think I would have had to, sooner or later. There are some things I can’t hide, things you would know, recognize for what they are, what they would mean… Ky, I never meant to deceive you, and then it was too late. But yes, I would have told you eventually.”

  “When?” he said.

  Slowly, she shook her head and gave him honesty.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “There never seemed a right time. You have every right to be angry with me and I have no right to ask your forgiveness.” She rubbed her forehead with the fingers of one hand, wearily. “And I was selfish. I just wanted a little time to be…human again… Raissa, not the Guardian of the Tomb. I had begun to forget what it was like to be real, to be human.”

  She took a breath.

  “With you, I remembered.”

  It was hard not to let his heart go out to her. He heard the echo in her voice when she’d said she was tired. There was a weariness in it that went beyond the body and down to the depths of the soul.

  Three thousand, four thousand years of waiting, of guarding…

  There was one last question. In a way, it was the most important one.

  “Why did you come?”

  Raissa looked at him. She sighed. She owed him truth for this, too, at least.

  “To stop you if I could,” she said, quietly. “And those others Tareq fears. Then I met you, spoke to and with you, and Ryan, Komi, even John…and everything changed.”

  To stop him, if she could.

  At least she was honest in that.

  Ryan. The others. Tareq.

  It was a reminder.

  They were waiting for him. And for her.

  It was like being doused with cold water, an dash of reality.

  “We should go,” he said, “the others will be expecting us.”

  It hurt, that abrupt dismissal. The distance in his voice pained her more than the bullets had.

  Ky saw her wince a little, heard her breath catch, saw the bright shimmer of tears she wouldn’t allow herself to shed.

  He had the power to hurt her it seemed and he had. A part of him had wanted to, but now he regretted it.

  Looking at her still, lovely face, he felt the tug, the ache in his heart he’d been fighting for these last weeks but how did he come to terms with being half in love with a three thousand year old priestess who was the guardian of a tomb said to be filled with evil spirits?

  Chapter Nineteen

  The office went silent when they entered, the whispered conversation abruptly ending. All the eyes were on Raissa, Ryan’s, Komi’s, John standing with his arms crossed in frank disbelief, Tareq…Dr. Hawass…in front of her and Ky behind her. It felt like a tribunal and perhaps in a way it was. She was very much on trial here.

  “So,” Tareq said, abruptly. “You would have us believe you are the High Priestess Irisi, who, it is said, was mummified alive.”

  Without preamble he caught her wrists, turned them to expose the insides.

  And reveal the neat little white scars over the veins and arteries there.

  Not long slashes like a suicide but small rounded nicks.

  “They used reeds of course,” she said, softly. “To keep them open to drain on the one side while the Water of Life was drawn in the other.”

  She remembered it well, the pain, the warmth of her life-blood as it slipped away, the coldness that seeped through her and the weakness, the sense of draining…the burn of the herb and natron laced water as it replaced the hot blood that flowed in her veins.

  Tareq looked into Raissa’s face as it paled and saw shadows in and beneath eyes that hours before had been calm, set and blazed brilliantly blue. He’d seen what had happened for himself. It still boggled his mind.

  “It’s surprising how much of the anatomy they knew and understood, and how much they got wrong. Yet they didn’t…”

  He mimed swirling a reed around.

  Raissa knew what he meant.

  It had been a common practice to insert a reed through the nose to remove the brain. It was the heart that was
the seat of the soul, of reason. Some ancient Egyptians thought the brain had no significance, it was nothing but mucus as anyone with a cold could attest…so they’d removed it.

  With a half smile, she sighed and shook her head.

  “That was later generations. It was also important I be as intact as possible so I could recreate a living body. After all, I wasn’t going on to the afterlife.”

  Tareq interrupted, his fingers going to the pulse points in her wrists.

  There was nothing. No pulse, no steady thumping beneath his fingers. No heartbeat.

  No heart.

  It was common practice to remove the internal organs, to place them in funerary jars. All the organs, except one.

  He looked up at her.

  “Without a heart you couldn’t appear before Ma’at, your heart therefore couldn’t be weighed and judged and so you could not move on to the afterlife.”

  The rest didn’t bear thinking. He couldn’t quite bring himself to ask how they’d taken it from her.

  “Yes,” she said, softly, looking at him steadily.

  For a moment their eyes met.

  He couldn’t imagine it.

  Ky tried not to think about it, about what they must have done to her.

  What she’d allowed them to do.

  He knew the process of mummification.

  It was likely she’d fasted for days save for bitter herbs and the natron-laced Water of Life.

  They would have stripped her to skin. She would have prostrated herself on the altar. They would have washed her body, carefully, reverently, with more of the sacred herbs, more natron, more of the Water of Life, as they would any of the dead.

  Then they would have wrapped her in linen, yard after yard of it, bound her in it tightly, drenched her in the Water as the reeds in her wrists drained her life away on the one hand and filled her with the herbs and more of the Water of life on the other.

  How much courage had it taken for her not to fight them, to remain still and allow them to do it?

  How had Khai stood by and let them?

  “There’s no pulse,” Tareq confirmed, his voice soft as he looked up into Raissa’s face.

  “You’ve got no heart?” Ryan said, stunned.

  Raissa glanced at him with half a smile. “Oh, I have one. It’s just not here.”

  Frowning, Ryan said, “So you don’t feel anything?”

  There was something of Ky’s accusation in Ryan’s voice, too. A sense of betrayal nearly as deep as the reality of who and what she was set in, and the knowledge of all she hadn’t told him.

  They’d been friends.

  She couldn’t entirely blame him for his anger. He also wanted something or someone to blame for what had happened and a reason why she hadn’t told him any more than she’d told Ky.

  It still hurt, still pierced her sharply, both the accusation and the declaration.

  “No!” she said, more forcefully than she intended.

  With an effort, she gentled her voice.

  “I feel just as you do. Having a heart doesn’t take away my ability to feel. It’s only that my heart doesn’t beat here in my chest. Believe me, though, I feel pain, grief, joy and sorrow, just as you do.”

  John said flatly. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she said, softly. “Believe as you will, that’s why the Gods gave us reason.”

  For some reason Ky was finding this almost clinical discussion of what they’d done to her disturbing.

  He thought about it, what she’d allowed them to do, all those years ago, the pain and the horror of it.

  “What do we call you?” he asked, abruptly. “Raissa? Irisi?”

  Those blue eyes shot to him and the hurt in them was clear. He didn’t know why he felt the need to do this, to lash out at her, to hurt her, but it was there.

  “I was born Eres,” she said. “Banafrit, Isis’s priestess, gave me the name Irisi―made of Isis, maid of Isis―Nubiti is as much title as name. I was proud to carry both. Raissa, though, was my own choice, close enough in meaning to my own name, the one I was born with. I think of myself as Raissa. You can call me what you want.”

  “Why are you here?” Tareq asked.

  “Originally?” she asked and sighed as she walked to the window, looked out on the mall at the people who walked there. In a different time, a different dress, they might have been her own long dead people.

  For a moment she felt terribly alone and reached out to brush her fingers over the glass. She wanted to be one of them.

  She wasn’t.

  She never had been.

  From the time of her birth she’d fated to be a servant of the Gods. The Druids who had raised her had seen it, and Kahotep, priest of Horus. Her friend.

  She wouldn’t be less than honest, not with herself, not with them. Not now, when it was too late. And too important.

  “The old thief, my employer, had told me of those who searched for the Tomb, and I began to realize the magnitude of what I was up against. You see, we never considered that anyone would search for the Tomb out of curiosity. We were concerned with those who would seek it out for what was inside it, and with thieves. It was easier in the past, far more direct. Either lead the searchers astray by one means or another or kill those who persisted. It was hard to feel guilt for killing those who would steal from those in the afterlife, even more so for those who sought what was in the Tomb. The original plan, if I could not lead everyone astray―that was my first intention―was to lure all of those interested in the Tomb to it and then seal them within it, whether they released the Djinn or not.”

  “Did you kill the old thief?” Ky asked.

  Raissa looked at him. “No. I told you the truth. He had many enemies and his life was not without its dangers.”

  “And now?” Tareq demanded.

  Rubbing her forehead, Raissa took a breath, sighed.

  “That wasn’t possible to do with good men. I met Ky…Professor Farrar…and Ryan, Komi, John. I couldn’t betray them. The old thief was right, too. In a strange way he became my mentor of sorts, familiarizing me with this new world.”

  Startled, Ky said, “He knew what you were?”

  “Not until the end,” she said, quietly. “I found him dying. He told me I couldn’t defend the Tomb by myself, not anymore. As I discovered. As I’m still discovering. He told me I needed help, allies, but I didn’t know who to trust. He was the reason I went to Professor Farrar, he was the only one the old thief wouldn’t approach. He said he was too honest.”

  Tareq hadn’t missed the slip, or the change to Ky’s title, and he saw the aching loneliness in eyes that had been so merry when he’d first met her and he found he grieved for that. Still, he wouldn’t have wished on Ky the pain he might have to face from this. For it was just as clear to him, if not to Ky, where Ky’s feelings lay.

  Their eyes met, his and Raissa’s, and he saw the sure knowledge of her fate in them.

  She’d never been meant to survive.

  Briefly, she turned her head to the man they were both thinking of.

  Ky.

  With a sigh, Raissa acknowledged she’d foolishly thrown that chance away. Not that she could ever really have taken it.

  It was her own fault. She should have been honest with him from the first. But then, there had ever and always been only the Tomb…and her duty.

  She thought of those who waited below in the tomb, those who had survived those terrible dark days, and those who hadn’t, of the sacrifices that had been made to keep the world safe.

  And of what would be loosed on it if she failed.

  She shuddered.

  In the face of that, what choice did she have?

  Nor could she afford to lose any more allies, or any more friends.

  “Now?” she said. “You’re right, Dr. Hawass. It would be better for Ky, for Professor Farrar, to find the Tomb than those others. What we’ll do about the Djinn when we get the
re, I don’t yet know.”

  “So,” Tareq said, going still. “The Djinn are real?”

  “They are real, very real,” she said, looking at him, but she could see he didn’t really believe her, didn’t see the danger, not in his heart.

  None of them did.

  Still, he was curious.

  “You’ve seen them with your own eyes?” Tareq asked, his tone avid, seeking more information.

  “I’ve seen and I’ve fought them,” she said, softly. “Ghul, ifrit, sila, marid. All of them. Even now they batter at the walls of their prison, demanding to be let out among the living…”

  She shook her head.

  “What they would do in this world, in this time, especially the marid, will make your terrorists look like those boys in the souk, like the petty bullies they really are.”

  “Why? How?” Tareq asked. “I know the stories, but…”

  She looked at him and laughed. “But you don’t believe in them. By the time you learn better the damage would be done and they would be free. Although most aren’t as smart as men, they are cunning and physically much stronger, quicker and they heal very fast. It takes a direct blow to the heart, or the head, or a number of wounds so great that even their bodies can’t heal quickly enough to kill them. You would have a nearly invincible army rolling over the earth outward from Egypt.”

  Which was why so many had sought the Tomb over the years.

  “Some of the Djinn can take on the shapes of others, other men, other creatures both benign and terrifying. Most can take the shape of very attractive men. It’s how they procreate. The only way they procreate. Think of it, a species almost entirely male that can procreate only through human women. All but the ghul. The ghul can recreate themselves easily, and that only if they can control their appetite enough to bite and not feed. A bite, one bite, without cauterization, is enough. In less than a year you’d have thousands more Djinn.”

  “So that’s where the stories of zombies came from?” Ryan speculated.

  Puzzled Raissa looked at him and then at Ky, questioningly.

  Ky gave him a look. “Just ignore him.”

  “Just sayin’, boss,” Ryan said, with a grin.

  Tareq eyed them both, shook his head and said, carefully. “Few talk of the Djinn these days. They are tales of the past, save for those few who still believe in good Djinn.”