24 Bones (3 page)

Chapter Two

Near Nag Hammadi, Egypt

A
skari, peering from a low bench fashioned from the cliff, contemplated the black scarab. He watched the beetle push a dung ball up the slope, its legs like tiny lightning bolts. The beetle climbed backward toward the band of sunlight that struck over the ridge top. Askari’s scarred face, pocked like the cliff that housed his ascetic brothers, already basked in the sun’s rays. Within the caves, the Shemsu Hor had fasted in solitude, but now they roused to convene.

The beetle shoved the ball beyond the dark shadow, and the sun began to warm the larvae inside. Askari clapped his hands in praise of the day’s rebirth.

The reflection was appropriate and augured well, for today was the first day of the final lunar cycle before Akhet, the ancient Egyptian New Year. The holiday was different from when he was young, prior to the modern Aswan Dam’s construction. Then Akhet had marked the start of the annual Nile flood, when waters brimmed over banks to refresh the river’s slender shoulders with black alluvial.

As a young initiate, Askari had watched the water level each day with anticipation. The village women’s preparations for the festival grew frenzied as time grew short, the monks’ fasting and praying more ardent. Today, the dam meted out the waters in a measured, unnatural feed, and the monks checked the date on their watches.

He sighed through his gray-black beard, which hung like moss to his chest. Pulling himself to a stand, he leaned on his walking staff. He had fasted all week. The vision of his home swam before him. Askari needed his wits. He must ensure that the bread was ready for the break of fast.

He twitched nervously. Over fifty-eight years he had trained, been educated, and had educated others, all for this chance. Most generations never saw the prophet’s rebirth. Today, twenty-nine days prior to the death of the Fullness, the Shemsu Hor, the Shemsu Seth, and the Sisters of Isis would begin to gather. By the week’s end, the Spine of Osiris would be assembled, and the relic would choose a new prophet—as it had Jesus, Confucius, Moses, and the pharaohs before them.

Askari would be the new prophet’s companion. This wish had filled many empty years of meditation and doubt. He shivered despite the heat and furrowed his heavy brow.

“Bah,” he said. “Assemble the spine, restore the Fullness, and live on as a disciple.”

He needed to calculate the number of loaves of bread required. The Shemsu Hor numbered twelve desert monasteries, or deirs. Each deir had thirty-five companions. He struggled with the math. “Bah,” he repeated, his disused voice resisting speech.

He knelt and drew two columns with his staff. In the first, he marked the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. Beside these, he traced 35, 70, 140, 280, and 560. “If 8 and 4 are 12, then I need 140, plus 280,” he murmured and tugged at his beard as he added the respective numbers: 420 loaves. His neighbor Basil would help. They needed to retrieve the dough from the village women, called the watchers.

“Basil,” Askari croaked. “Basil, I am ready to begin baking.”

Only the wind and a thin wall separated his cave from Basil’s. A breeze blew around the mud barrier; the gusts rose with the heat of day. Weak with hunger, Askari nearly fainted when he stood, but he refused to reach for the Fullness to augment his endurance.

Avoidable use of the Fullness was forbidden, especially so close to the end of its cycle and with the Void at its zenith.
Drawing on the Fullness accessed a limited psychic pool from which the wielder could obtain the skills of ancient masters or augment their natural telekinetic and telepathic capabilities. It was not to be called upon for steadiness.

Askari trudged into his home. Beside the entry was a niche, within which stood an urn. He ladled water taken from a local oasis where the Persians had once cleaned their swords of the blood of martyrs. The first spoonful he drank, and the second he used to clean his hands and face. The third he carried inside.

Each year the companions left their deirs to gather and re-enact the rebirth of the Benu bird, the Phoenix, retelling the myth of Osiris’s return from the dead. The spine itself was symbolic of the resurrection. This time, however, the gathering would include the Sisters of Isis and the Shemsu Seth, a meeting unseen for five hundred years. Every five hundred years, Osiris returned in the form of the prophet. And the spine moved from the symbolic to the literal.

As he entered the cave, Askari pulled close the hood of his brown ceremonial robe. A golden brocade trim met at the front of the cowl and then arced backward, dividing the robe in two. The frayed stitching curved down his back, representing Osiris’s spine. Deep in the cave’s recess, a white plastered shrine reflected light from the entry.

He raised his eyes to the wings painted over the shrine. Between the wings shone the sun-symbol of Re. He knelt before the altar, splashing water across the grooved offering table, just as it would be spilled at the prophet’s rebirth. The profile of the goddess Isis stared down at Horus’s face as he suckled at her breast. Beneath, some ascetic’s childish hand had drawn Horus’s battle against Seth. Horus avenged his father Osiris’s dismemberment, losing an eye in the fight. Horus defeated Seth, but before he could strike the deathblow, his mother, Isis, caught his arm. Horus was so enraged that he chopped off her head. Askari hoped that the meeting of the three cults would proceed more smoothly. After all, they were each committed to maintaining the balance.

“There is no god who has become a star without a companion. Shall I be your companion?” Askari asked the mural.

No answer issued from the mouth of Isis’s profile, nor any slurping mumble from Horus’s full lips. The engines of a passing jet scored the silence. Askari touched Horus. Behind the plaster was a secret he shared with only the Tablet of Destiny and the leaders of the companions. Askari was a keeper. The last keeper had passed on the location over two decades ago with jealous words: “Greatness is as much luck as it is heart, Askari. Do not grow vain on the shoulders of chance.” Askari smiled. Luck, yes, but not heart. Perseverance had made him keeper.

His fingers caressed the plaster hiding the relic, untouched for half a millennium. Today he would break its seal.

He walked back into the sunlight, sneezing at the sudden warmth, and curled around the mud wall to Basil’s home.

“Basil!” he called. “Companion!”

Demotic writing and geometric designs illustrated Basil’s side of the separating wall like ancient graffiti. Askari couldn’t read it, but he knew its translation:
May the Trinity unify the Ennead lest we become the millions
. An Ennead was nine gods. It never failed to impress Askari that the ancient Egyptians had a hieroglyph for a “million” even in its earliest lexicon over five thousand years ago. The text was a warning. The Trinity—Osiris, Horus, and Isis—must unify the Ennead, or humanity would lose its connection to the Fullness. The message missed one important point. They also needed the cooperation of the Shemsu Seth.

Askari approached Basil’s entry and rapped the side with his staff. The wind blew a hollow note across the mouth of the monk’s home.

“Basil? You ready?” He huffed.

Stomping into the single chamber, Askari pushed his staff before him, his eyes blind after the bright sunlight. The tip found Basil first.

The monk was sprawled on the ground, the dirt darkened by his blood.

Chapter Three

Beneath the City of the Dead, Cairo

W
ith Sam’s jackal mask off, the pretence of anonymity was discarded. A thick vein pulsed on her forehead, down her taut cheek and corded neck, disappearing into black robes. Tara hung by her wrists, manacled too high for her toes to touch the stone floor. She shook in the dank underworld.

“You don’t have the tablet.” Pharaoh hulked upon a throne like a statue of Ramesses II, replete with red hair and fiery beard. He was just a man, but his power washed down the pyramid of steps to break over Sam’s dark face.

“Without the tablet, we cannot find all the parts of the spine, and without the spine …”

In the balconies above, dwarfs clustered with other followers of Seth, the deity of the so-called Shemsu Seth. Sam bent under the weight of their catcalls, her gaze shifting to her sandaled feet; where black leather straps laced up fine-boned toes.

“You don’t have the tablet, and you bring your mother in its stead. You did not kill her.”

“The woman knows,” Sam stuttered, lifting her head.

“Speak or die, woman.” The Pharaoh stood and raised his
djed
staff, a thick shaft of burnished mahogany topped by four equal crossbars. The air filled with static. “Where is the Tablet of Destiny?” Tara jerked against the manacles as Pharaoh pulled her forward over a pit. The hair on Sam’s arms and neck rose. Sparks arced between the crossbars of Pharaoh’s staff.

“We have the text, Pharaoh,” Sam soothed.

“Only part,” he snapped. “Text any Shemsu Seth pup can recite. And I would have the gold.” His words slid like the hiss of sand down a slope. “I would have the gold.” The congregation grumbled its accord. “Or I would have blood.”

“You have blood,” Sam confirmed, pressing on a vein at her cheek. “I killed her partner.”

Tara’s chains jangled free of Pharaoh’s Void-grip.

“In battle?”

“No, in sacrifice. A handler attended. I gave the heart to Seth.”

“Handler,” Pharaoh called into the balconies.

A dwarf stood on the stone rail that held back the horde. His arms and shoulders were crowded with muscles.

“Is this true, did you witness?”

Sam swallowed.

“Samiya sacrificed the man to Seth, Pharaoh.” The dwarf’s voice rang clear.

Pharaoh’s eyes brightened, and Sam sensed him probing the dwarf’s mind.

“Seth accepts his sacrifice, blessings on you,” Pharaoh rumbled.

“Blessings on the temple,” Sam responded, drawing a breath.

“Did you use a black ankh?” Pharaoh asked.

A sacrifice made using a black ankh consigned the energy of the victim to the Void, a complete death for the human portion of the soul, which would spend eternity roaming the animal Void.

Sam shook her head. Jeers sluiced down from above. Since she had not used the ankh, Pharaoh could require another sacrifice. Sam glanced to her mother, once again glad Sam had been the one to find her. The woman’s chin rested on her chest, and she stared into the pit beyond her feet.

“We will remedy that,” Pharaoh said, eyeing Tara.

“Give me until Horus’s left eye rises,” Sam requested. The left eye meant the full moon, a fortnight before Akhet, the ancient Egyptian New Year. A sacrifice to Seth then would be auspicious.

Pharaoh paused. The full moon would demand a sacrifice anyway, and sacrifices were not popular when pulled from the rank and file even if they came from the slum of
Manshiyat Yaser
, Garbage City.

Shadows veiled his face from where she stood at the temple’s base. The steps before her rose like a pyramid’s courses. Darkness shrouded all but his eyes, which glowed. The ominous radiance wasn’t due to the reflection of the liquid-filled vessels that lit the underworld from high niches. Pharaoh was Void-touched. The cast of his eyes showed he had held the Void too long and risked losing himself in it. Sam clasped and unclasped her hands under the red-tinged gaze.

“Gold, or blood when the moon is full.” The Pharaoh’s mouth split into a grin. “He was your first, I understand.” He turned to retrieve an item beside the throne. “Congratulations.”

At the base of the stairs to Pharaoh’s throne was an altar carved from a single piece of alabaster. Nine spouts protruded from the altar’s central circular groove. Nine holes in the floor collected the spouts’ offerings. The Pharaoh descended to stand before the altar.

Sam took a single step back and then held. As he approached, Pharaoh grew larger until he overshadowed the star altar. Upon it, he placed a crossbow and a quiver of bolts.

“May these serve Seth well.”

“Hail, Seth!” Approval crashed.

A rush of pleasure flushed Sam’s cheeks. When she had first joined the Shemsu Seth, she had been tested, and although she could harness the Void, Pharaoh had been disappointed; the Void she could reach was a trickle when compared to his strength.

She stepped forward, looking from the weapon to Pharaoh. His pale broad face had a wide, flat nose placed between considerable cheekbones and above a cavernous mouth. A delta of deep wrinkles spread from the corners of his lips and eyes. His skin appeared stretched thin over his skull. Beneath the shadow of his brow, the eyes shone. When she reached for the crossbow, his mottled hand briefly touched hers. One finger traced the tendons on the back of her hand. She retrieved the weapon, a black, modern crossbow, timeless, yet fitted with a laser sight.

She attached the quiver to its base and slid her robe’s cord through a loop that enabled her to shoulder the weapon. She grasped its haft and smirked as she aimed.

“When the full moon rises, Pharaoh.”