24 Bones (27 page)

Chapter Forty-two

L
ee Chin’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as the surge of energy left him. Stunned by the union of so much power, never had he been able to sense the meaning of yarrow so casually tossed. Pharaoh had not wanted the diviners to divine, only to focus their minds, but Lee couldn’t help himself. Energy had crackled at his fingertips, and if he ran his nails across the boardroom table, blue sparks lanced against its surface.

Yarrow stems lay within the octagonal bagua before him, eight trigrams. After recovering from the release of power, he studied their design once more.

The bagua was a traditional framework used to conduct an I Ching reading, and this bagua carried great movement, its eight trigrams:
Returning
,
Centre Confirming
,
Obstruction
,
Shake
,
Skinning
,
Corrupting
, and
Gorge
—
the Abysmal Water
—the double water trigram. When he had started the reading, warmth saturated him and he felt a unity that he often sensed conducting a reading, but never to such a degree. Then the warmth shattered.

He shook his head, no longer able to see truth in the yarrow, but viewing the bagua nonetheless. He shivered at its inauspicious trend. Ten million dollars was not enough.

CNN’s headlines flickered on the wall-mounted television,
Return of a God?
and
Cracks in Aswan Dam Threaten Millions
.

His mobile rang.

“Hello?”

“Something is wrong, Mr. Chin. The diviners … they’re dying.”

Ancient Egyptian God Returns
scrolled across the muted screen.

“Let
us pray for Pharaoh and his great works.” Father John Harrelson intoned from his velvet-upholstered chair. “Let us turn our minds to Egypt, to Cairo, and pray that our Lord gives Pharaoh strength in his time of need.” Beside Father Harrelson, Ashley Starr, three sheets to the wind, looked earnest and then broke into his dazzling smile.

“Alleluia, praise the Lord.”

Chapter Forty-three

P
haraoh moved to the Great Pyramid’s entry. A wire mesh gate blocked the passage. Osiris’s heart pulsed, and the gate shrieked and crumpled like tinfoil. A low stone tunnel led into the Grand Gallery where the walls were pressed beneath six million tons of rock and sand.

“The southern ones, those who are upon earth, belong to this pharaoh. He comes indeed, this pharaoh, weary of the nine, an imperishable spirit.” He passed the ladder that descended to the pyramid’s subterranean cavity and climbed above the tunnel that led to the Queen’s Chamber. This night lay with the heavens, and the majesty of the gallery rose before him.

“The northern ones, those who are upon earth, belong to this pharaoh. Those who are in the lower sky belong to this pharaoh.” Massive blocks of pink granite vaulted in seven courses, each closer to the next. “He comes indeed, this pharaoh, weary of the nine, an imperishable spirit.” He climbed.

As the sloped stairs rose, the courses of stone pinched the gallery and narrowed to a point high above. Cerulean energy wormed over Pharaoh and arced in and out of his flesh.

Void and Fullness—both powers could be drawn or relinquished through the fiery faucet of the Osiris, but only Void remained.

Seth entered the lowest course of the gallery.

Pharaoh glanced down at the bright-coal eyes and then strode past the tri-portcullis and into the King’s Chamber.

Fifty-ton blocks of granite formed the walls of the hall and eighty-ton slabs its roof. The room’s only decorations were two holes in the northern and southern sidewalls and a rose-colored sarcophagus.

At the first hole in the sidewall, a hole considered a ventilation shaft by Egyptologists, Pharaoh jammed the diamond prism. With a single pulse of the spine’s heart, he blasted a path to the heavens. He stepped across the floor and opened the second shaft.

“The double doors of heaven are open for thee. The double doors of the stars are open for thee,” he recited. The twin veins connected the chamber to the stars. Their cold light shed for him.

Pharaoh stood over the sarcophagus and plucked a glob of gum from its side. Flicking it, he clambered in and lay down. He extracted the cup of the Eucharist from his robe and dribbled water inside from a waterskin. He placed the cup at his feet.

“Homage to thee, Osiris, lord of eternity, whose names are manifold, thou being of hidden form in the temples, whose
Ka
is holy. Thou art the substance of two lands …”

Outside
the
pyramid, the cameraman recorded the sonic
booms and the blast of masonry that erupted from the pyramid’s sides. The thunder of a thousand tons of falling stone only briefly covered the sisters’ and companions’ cries of pain as hounds and crocodiles pulled apart the army of brown-robed men and black-robed women.

He recorded it all. Through his microphone and lens and via the satellite antenna, which rose like a periscope above his media truck where he kneeled, the world listened and watched.

Beside him, the reporter prattled: “In other news, cracks have formed in the Aswan Dam and authorities have ordered a complete evacuation of the city of Aswan and surrounding area.” Her hair was matted and her mascara smudged, but she continued the live feed; klaxons and gunfire punctuated the newscast. For the first time in five hundred years, the voice of a god ushered forth from the Temple of the Phoenix.

The pyramid began to hum.

“The stars
in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee, Osiris, and the great doors of the sky open themselves before thee, Osiris,” Pharaoh spoke in a bass. The words blended in the resonant chamber to repeat:
Osiris, Osiris, Osiris.

The vibrations filled the room and rose through the five hidden chambers above, each augmenting and echoing the sound to send it back into the chamber. The sound waves clashed, pushed through the shafts, and launched to the heavens. Outside the pyramid, the Shemsu Seth took up the call. Soldiers and dwarfs paused in their carnage and exulted in their leader’s reincarnation.

Inside the coffin the decibels collided and lifted Pharaoh. On a bed of sound, he floated at the level of the sarcophagus’s lip. The staff above him shone like a struck flare; its phosphorescence cast Seth’s face into a repulsive mask of shadow.

“It is I, Osiris. I am the Benu bird, which is in Anu. I am the keeper of the Tablet of Destiny, of the things which have been made and of the things which shall be made,” Pharaoh affirmed.

Sam
cowered from the pain in her chest and hunched in darkness. Something pushed at her neck, furry and wet. And then, teeth clamped around her throat. She swatted at it, but her fists fell on a fuzzy muzzle. Fangs bit, but not deeply, and then tugged and pulled. Still she fought for sanctuary within herself, unwilling to open her eye. She bathed in Void.

A low growl reverberated and her eyelid flew open. Faris’s fur shimmered blue, his great mane a loop of fire, and his eyes radiated like a witch’s crystal ball. Sam stiffened at the sight of him. One tip of her spear had embedded in the Valley Temple floor; the other wedged into a massive block that threatened to crush her. She slipped her legs out of the path of its trajectory and rubbed her chest.

“Askari.”
She remembered.

From outside the shattered remains of the Valley Temple came strangled cries. Sirens sawed the night. Using the Void, she shifted the stone block and wrenched her lance free.

“Faris, I need to find Zarab.”

Faris crouched, eyes glazed with Void. Then he pounced.

Sam twisted, but the lion was too fast, and his jaws caught the back of her neck and hoisted her. She waited for her neck to snap, but instead she hovered in the air, carried like a kitten by its mother. Across the Giza plateau, the lion loped.

Many sisters had been torn to pieces. Those that lived lay on their sides, eyes open and shining with Void.

Faris dropped Sam at the tomb’s entry where she had left Zarab.

She walked stiffly down the steps, spear before her. Zarab glanced around the tomb’s arch, and she waved him forward.

Seth’s
vision narrowed to a slit-eyed glare and he licked
his lips as Pharaoh floated above the sarcophagus. The Spine of Osiris sank into Pharaoh’s chest slowly and without movement from Pharaoh or cries of pain. Seth’s robes trembled with the hum of the room and the earth shook.

The crocodiles and hounds were unleashed upon Cairo’s streets. Sobek had joined the fray. The tips of its talons disemboweled sisters, and the snap of its jaw split Shemsu Hor in half. Water slopped over the rim of the Aswan dam. Lake Nasser frothed with a god’s fury. And Seth smiled.

“I have knit together my bones. I have made myself whole and sound. I have become young once more. I am Osiris, the lord of eternity.”

Pharaoh’s words snuffed out Seth’s grin.

His lips twisted in a snarl as the spine’s heart neared Pharaoh’s ribs. The transformation neared completion.
Pharaoh’s chant buzzed in Seth’s head. The diamond tip stabbed through Pharaoh’s back in a stream of blood. Pharaoh didn’t flinch or convulse with the mortal wound.

Seth stared at the sarcophagus, perhaps the same tomb in which Seth had originally trapped Osiris. He considered what power could replicate a myth six thousand years later. The Heart’s throbbing light vanished. The drone rose to a maddening pitch like the wings of a hundred thousand scarabs. Only Seth’s eyes illuminated the chamber.

Osiris’s heart throbbed in place of Pharaoh’s dying one.

Seth tucked his chin to his chest at the glow that began to light Pharaoh from within. Arms stretched out. He made his choice. “I would be the Osiris,” he cried. “The throne is mine!”

Seth grabbed the staff and hauled.

Pharaoh’s eyes flared open. One gleamed as the moon, the other as the sun. They flickered as Seth wrestled with the backbone.

Pharaoh grabbed Seth’s throat, his hand vast and viselike. But when Pharaoh’s body shifted beyond the sarcophagus, the light was eclipsed from his eyes, and he fell to the floor. He regained his feet, but the transformation was imperfect. His face crumpled with agony, and his fingers clutched the spear that skewered his heart.

Seth struck with the back of his fist, and teeth exploded from Pharaoh’s mouth. Seth rammed his elbow into Pharaoh’s chin and broke his jaw. Seth’s brow flattened Pharaoh’s nose. Pharaoh choked on the wreckage of his face. Seth struck until the blood-masked Pharaoh remained upright only by the grace of Seth’s grip on the staff. Then Seth jerked the spine free.

Pharaoh slid onto the cold stone at the base of the coffin. The staff was colored the ruddy brown of liver.

“You never would have shared your power,” Seth said to the broken pharaoh at his feet.

Seth held the muddied diamond of the backbone above the left side of his chest. He shut molten eyes and grunted as the tip split flesh, wedged between ribs, and then crawled of its own volition, deeper and deeper and deeper, until the darkened gem beat beside his black heart.

Zarab
and Sam broke from the shelter of the tombs. Immediately, the Shemsu Seth bore down on them. Hounds howled and gave chase. Lizards assailed, their fluid gait kicking back sprays of sand as they sprinted.

Sam spent her strength whirling her blades to protect Zarab from the shower of missiles and rip of claws. Without the Fullness, the winged spear shone like the moon making a low passage. The cool disc drove snouts into sand and deflected quarrels, but she tired. When she arrived at the first course of the Great Pyramid, the blades turned slower, now a waning crescent. The Void threatened to consume her. A girl’s face streaked past. Bob-cut hair flailed about a small mouth stretched in rictus. Rage shook Sam.

“Wedjat,” she roared and pushed forward.

Another cry rang out: “Re Riseth,” intermixed with: “For Christ!”

A swarm of men and women eclectically attired in jeans, pants, and robes attacked with makeshift spears and rifles. A helicopter soared overhead. Its spotlight lit the bishops’ force. And Sobek’s ivory scales.