24 Bones (4 page)

The laser sight traced a red dot on her mother’s forehead.

Chapter Four

Near Nag Hammadi, Egypt

“B
asil,” Askari cried. He collapsed in the dust before the body and stroked Basil’s black hair. Basil’s thick mane had been pulled into a topknot, and each caress by Askari shifted his neck, separating the head from the body. Askari gagged at the reek of blood and shook as he choked back the water he had consumed. His friend lay beheaded.

“Re, let him rise to you. Fold him in your arms.” Askari’s voice quavered as he recited the ancient funerary words. “Your son comes to you. This Basil comes to you. That you both may stride over the sky, united in darkness. That you may rise on the horizon.” Askari cupped his hands over Basil’s temples and lifted the head, placing it on the corpse’s stomach. He then took the thin body into his arms. No blood drained from the ragged edge of the neck. Basil was long dead.

Askari began the mile trek to the monastery. Along the rock ridge that surrounded the deir, others quit their caves, some alone, some carried a head; others like Askari managed a whole body. All walked in silence until the tumult of crags and crevices gave way to sand and their gaze fell upon the deir and its temple and ankh.

“Re riseth!” each shouted. Their calls pierced the stillness.

“Re riseth.” Askari’s cry boomed to the cliffs. Its echo carried the same bitterness of the others—a cry not of worship, but war.

By the time Askari reached the monastery, bodies lined the walls, its closed gates besieged by corpses. Basil’s weight bore Askari forward. Bowlegged, he staggered the final paces and slumped the corpse at the wall’s base. Other companions milled about the perimeter and before a gate of iron-banded tree trunks.

“Open,” shouted a tall bald monk in a tan robe. “Gatekeeper,” he called into the silence. Askari grunted.

“They must think we have some plague, Haidar,” Askari said. Indeed, plague was sweeping much of Africa. Bereft of Basil’s weight, Askari walked to Haidar.

“Why do they not answer?” Haidar asked as they met. “No plague can sever a man’s neck.” Askari took Haidar’s hand and clasped the tense claw.

“I do not know.” Askari hesitated. “Perhaps …” Haidar stared at him hard. “Perhaps no one lives,” Askari finished and leaned against the wall. The sun beat on his face, already hot. Other monks hid their heads under robes or simply lay stunned on the warming sand. “We must open the gate to gain food. Does the Watcher Faris live?”

Haidar nodded and pointed to a slim man tending a body. The watchers were a support network for the companions. They cleaned, cooked, and conducted non-religious duties in service of the deir. Due to the nature of the tasks, they tended to be female. Their religious role was to bear witness to Osiris’s coming.

“Faris,” Askari shouted.

The young, trim-bearded man looked over and started toward him. Faris nodded to Askari; the large brown eyes of his thin face were red-rimmed.

“You must climb over the wall and unbar the gate.”

Faris was small and nimble. His sharp features contracted and for a moment annoyance kindled there.

Askari placed a hand on his elbow, quelling the slight man’s anger, and turned to Haidar. “Let me stand upon your shoulders,” Askari told him.

Haidar braced against the wall. Askari wrestled onto his back and up onto his shoulders.

“Quickly,” Haidar whispered to Faris, who stared at the dead.

Another companion helped to lift Faris, and Askari swung him onto his back. In a burst of strength, Faris scrabbled upward as if a rat escaping water and then dropped over the edge. The companions waited for several minutes; until, finally, a hammer banged at the doors, metal upon metal, and then the latch was free.

The gates opened a crack, and Askari entered. Bodies were wedged at the base of the doors. Faris had needed to drag corpses away in order to access the latch. His skin had paled to the color of a fire pit’s ash. Together with Haidar, Askari freed the doors of their fleshy stops and opened the gates fully.

For several minutes, companions moved from body to body and checked for life. Each body had been stabbed through the heart, and many had an eye removed. On an altar whose base depicted a sundisc, the eyes were piled. Under their glutinous mass lay a bas-relief of the Eye of Horus, the Wedjat that Seth had gouged from his nephew in myth.

“The eyes, Askari,” Haidar said. “This is doubtless the work of the Shemsu Seth.”

The windshields of three sand-colored monastery jeeps were shattered, the tires slashed and canvas roofs torn. Sackers, in their search for hidden compartments, had cracked many of the panels that lined the temple proper.
Askari vomited, finally overcome.

A shriek, sharp like a falcon’s call, rose above Askari’s retches. Rayla, a young woman who limped due to a childhood case of polio, screamed. Her basket toppled to the sand, which soiled the spilled dough. Her voice lifted in anguish, and like a pierced boil, her wails drew out the companions’ pain.

“Re Benu—Re Benu,” the companions chanted to the sky, the sun, calling for the resurrection of the dead and of the Egyptian creator god, Re. Askari spat the last of his bile into the darkened sand and whispered: “Thanks be to Horus. I am called. The battle begun.”

Chapter Five

D
ead surrounded the inner courtyard of the monastery.

Faris shied from hollow socket stares and the scent of corruption. He had heard of people who, in times of crisis, stood strong and did not crumble. He wondered from what store they received their strength. His narrow shoulders trembled. Haidar, a lanky companion with sunken eyes and a mentor to Faris, carried another corpse in from the desert, his baldhead reflecting the sun.

Askari clasped the hand of headless Basil as he shouldered him through the gate and into the courtyard for the cleansing ritual. The keeper’s beard swayed as he moved. With Basil lain in the lengthening row, Askari disappeared into the kitchens. Faris looked to the temple’s cracked depiction of a bird with a human head rising from a prostrate Osiris. The panels overlooked the altar. The bird was the
Ba
, the spirit of Osiris, which was in them all.

Faris too sought flight. He wished to rise above the desert bowl where the monastery lay and soar over the cool waters of the Nile like his falcon, Syf. He closed his eyes and opened them again, raising his gaze to the temple’s golden ankh and three sandstone domes. The quaking eased for a moment but renewed when his earth-bound sight rested on the dozen dead. His family, their tan robes blackened with blood.

His birth family lived in the nearby village of Nag Hammadi. As the youngest of eight children in a Muslim family, he had fed on the meager scraps left from already scanty meals. The only true sustenance at the table had been his father’s tales. Stories from the Qu’ran, stories of their ancestors, these Faris could feast upon. They seeded his fascination for Egyptian myth, the remains of which were scattered about the desert.

His brothers had nicknamed him
nos reejal
, or “part man.” The name still rankled, but he realized the title was not meant to be derogatory; Faris, by any standard, was only “part.” But because of his size, a camel could carry his weight in addition to another man’s, and a skiff could carry Faris and a larger load. Another hand without the burden, he was company, as well as conscience. The conscience aspect had led him to the companions.

His grandfather told one story regularly both for the pivotal wealth it provided to the family and, Faris suspected, for easing some inner turmoil. Only after much cajoling would his grandfather’s stern face finally break into a resigned frown, like the expression of a streetseller settling on a price, and he would begin.

The story of the treasure discovered in the desert inevitably changed with each retelling—the depth of the hole dug to claim the urn deepening; the size of the urn expanding; and the contents of the vessel, a precious tablet, growing.

At which point, Great-Grandmother would inevitably remark, “And your brother sold it to a one-eyed black marketeer for barely the weight of the gold. Each sheaf of papyrus was worth the amount times ten.”

Faris’s grandfather would scowl and then make everyone laugh with how when his brother broke the urn’s seal they had fled the escaping
jinni
.

Great-Grandmother, calling for silence, would continue with her telling of her husband’s death, Faris’s great-grandfather, whose murderer’s heart had filled their stomachs that same night. Warned of the approach of police, Faris’s great-uncle had fled to Cairo to sell the tablet and provide the family with the benefits of their treasure. The pump purchased with the proceeds still pushed water into the fields, and the acreage had expanded to earn currency for the large and extended family seated at the table, though no surplus.

Faris imagined his grandfather still told the story today, although without the grumbling interjections of Great-Grandmother, who had passed. The story had frustrated Faris; something had been missing. Finally, he asked what had happened when the police had arrived—why they would kill someone, but he only received guarded answers that the messenger had been mistaken and they were not police at all.

One night he probed his great-uncle when he was drunk on beer, a rarity for a practicing Muslim.

“Shemsu Seth,” he had said quietly. “The dark brotherhood came and demanded the store of texts, but it was too late.” His head had hung low, whether due to guilt for drinking or for confiding a secret, Faris did not know. “We had another brother, one who did not flee. They killed him along with your great-grandfather.”

It wasn’t until Faris was fifteen that he heard again of the similar group called the Shemsu Hor, the Companions of Horus. He also learned of the Sisters of Isis, who had eventually acquired the golden tablet and, with it, a store of texts. Faris had immediately taken the steps required to become a companion, but with one great failure. Faris could not reach the Fullness, and worse, he could control the Void.

He was never fully trusted, part man and part companion, relegated to the rank of watcher. In his dreams, however, he gave himself a different name:
the dark companion.
His left eye twitched, a symptom of his black anger.

“Faris.” Askari’s call drew him from the past, and he tore his gaze from the ankh’s eyelet and the sun’s glare. Askari, shabby in oil-stained brown robes, looked concerned. He clasped Faris’s shoulder. Faris’s attempt to smile failed.

“Don’t expect to ever feel the same, Faris, though it is good for you to have seen.”

Faris struck the arm away and clenched his jaw. “Good?”

The companion’s expression hardened. “In war, it is important to know the reason for the fight. It is why the Sisters of Isis speak of balance and the Shemsu Seth talk of evil and chaos. These symbols are different for everyone, but to everyone important. The Shemsu Seth murdered your great-grandfather and your grandfather’s brother, and they killed your companions. You understand that they shall keep on killing until the world contains the chaos they seek. You can build your fire of rage on more kindling than most.”

Faris’s fists balled at his sides. He stared at Askari, hating him for connecting his unspoken thoughts, yet wanting to embrace him for his implicit acceptance of him as a companion, not merely a flawed watcher.

“Come,” Askari motioned toward the temple, “it is time for the deir to meet. What is left of us.”

The last of the living had entered the temple ahead of them, leaving only the sweet stink of death. Faris followed Askari, who strode toward the temple steps. As they pushed through the doors, shouts and screams issued from the holy core.

In the first chamber of the temple, the Hall of Offerings, beer, bread, and water were sacrificed to Re on a small altar. On the wall, sunbeams streaming through ceiling-vents traced bas-reliefs of Re’s journey. Beyond an arch, corridors led to the left and to the right; along this passage were nine chapels, each consecrated to a god of the Egyptian Ennead. The Hall of the Ennead framed the inner sanctum. Here, men argued.

The breach of silence in the chamber of Re somehow defeated Faris, and tears flowed down his cheeks. He ran a sleeve across his face. On the inner sanctum’s altar was a broken vessel; the sacred boat upon which Re journeyed lay in fragments. Planks were scattered over the floor, discarded oars and a gilded prow amongst them. Replacing the Boat of a Million Years was a dead falcon lying above four simple circles carven into the sides of the tapered altar.

“Are the other birds dead?” Askari asked.

“Most,” an older man named Shen replied. “Those who were at work during the culling are safe.” Shen’s face was plump, but grooved with wrinkles that radiated from a bulbous nose and grim lips.

Askari hugged Shen. His eyes, normally kind, were red and puffy. Shen stroked the dead falcon’s tail feathers with a leather falconer’s gauntlet. The falcons were both symbols of Horus’s power and an important part of the deir’s communication network, many of the monasteries being desert based and without basic telephone service.

Askari addressed the dozen men. “We will begin immediately to rebuild the flock and request help from other deirs in doing so.”

Faris hung back at the outer arch of the sanctum, standing at its threshold. It was the first time he had set foot on its raised floor. The story of Horus, Osiris, Isis, and Seth played out upon its walls.

“The other deirs journey here for the Akhet holiday,” Askari continued. “We wait for the high priests to meet and guide us.” Their deir’s high priest lay headless in the courtyard. If Re so chose, high priest was a position both Askari and Haidar would be honored to fill.

As Faris studied those around the altar, he suddenly recognized a pattern to the murders.

“You’re all old.” His hand clapped over his mouth. All eyes turned. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“No,” Askari said, nodding. “You’re right. Who here is the youngest companion?”

Habib stepped forward, the youngest at forty-nine.

“What reason could they have to kill the youth and leave the wise?” Haidar asked.

“Age is not necessarily an indicator of wisdom,” Askari cautioned. Faris cringed. Haidar was five years older than Askari. “They know something that we do not, or else they would kill us all.”

“The balance. Even the Shemsu Seth understand the need for balance.” Mohammed spoke, the man Faris had seen shuffle inside the temple before him. Mohammed’s back bent so steeply he perpetually contemplated the floor.

Haidar pumped a fist. “And to maintain that balance we need to strike.” Several companions nodded, as did Faris.

“Brothers,” Askari calmed, “let us first gather our strength, assemble the Spine of Osiris, and discover what it is we fight back against.”

“Why?” demanded Haidar. “We know their lair. Let us kill their youth. Let Shen kill Seth’s puppies. And let us place their sacred crocodile, Sobek, on their altar.” Spittle flew from his lips. He focused his stare on Askari. “And I will kill the pharaoh.”

“Bravely said, Haidar, and so we shall punish them for their act, but in acting swiftly we do not know what they may have accomplished which we do not see.”

Haidar snorted. “You speak in a riddle.”

“They have killed each of the youths of our deir as well as our high priest. Perhaps they were searching for someone, but with limited information.”

“As I suspect too, Askari, but there is more.” The companions turned to the strong voice that carried through the Hall of Offerings. A white-bearded man entered. “They want the Spine of Osiris.” He wore brown robes with the gold embroidery of a falcon upon his hood. Faris knew him to be Michael of Deir Abd-al-Rahman. Each deir represented one of the original Companions of Horus, and each protected a portion of Osiris’s middle spine, the twelve thoracic vertebrae. Michael climbed the steps into the sanctum and clasped his hands to form the sun symbol of Re. Shutting his eyes, he basked in its light.

“I am sorry to bring no better word. We lost a third of our companions last night, as well as the keeper and our portion of the Osiris.” Michael stared at Askari who paled. Grim understanding burned in Faris’s stomach. In a single night, the Shemsu Hor were gutted.

Two new companions approached. “We have lost our high priest, but bring our portion of the spine.”

The deirs’ high priests had been elected the descendents of the original companions and had oral knowledge of the prophecy and locations of Osiris’s thoracic vertebrae.

Askari opened his mouth to speak, but Haidar interrupted.

“I expect we will hear similar sad news from the others. Let us tend to the dead and eat. The bread bakes, and we must be strong if we are to fight.” Haidar’s voice rumbled in the sanctuary, and he led them out. Askari’s jaw snapped shut and he followed.

Faris waited, gaze lingering over a depiction of the zodiac on the chamber’s roof. Horus stood on top of the water sign, Osiris’s head above him. Scanning the circle, Faris halted at Seth’s image. Seth too had been given a piece of Osiris, the lower spine. Above Seth, a man wrestled a serpent whose mouth clutched Seth’s phallus.

“It is the youth who ask questions, Faris. I hope you stay young after today,” Shen said from the altar where he cradled his falcon.

“Why is it called a zodiac?” Faris asked.

“The word zodiac is not Egyptian, but Greek, and it means circle of animals. It is so because life is a circle, which is why I like to say that you should never be afraid to take a fork.”

Faris smiled for the first time that morning.

“Is Syf okay?” Shen asked. Faris’s falcon had been a gift from Shen when Faris entered the monastery as a designated watcher. He nodded. A smile briefly played at Shen’s lips, joy a bird temporarily lost in the sun. In some ways, Shen was like him; Shen couldn’t reach the Fullness either, and it gave them a special bond. There was one important difference, however. Shen couldn’t control the Void.

“Shen, does it upset you that you did not pass the initiation and so became a watcher?” Faris asked tentatively. Shen, as keeper of the falcons, was an honorary companion, but without the ability to reach the Fullness, he could never be initiated even though he bore the compass-shaped baptismal scar on his shoulder.

A flash of annoyance crossed Shen’s face before he hid it in an indulgent smile.

“Few can reach the Fullness. It is not a defeat, Faris. I am glad to be a watcher and the keeper of falcons.”

“Can everyone reach the Void?”

Shen’s smile broadened. “Good, you are young still!” He chuckled. “In some ways, it is true that anyone can reach the Void. Anyone who has lost himself or herself in rage will have touched the Void. It has always been easier to do what is evil versus what is good.” Faris gritted his teeth at this slight. “Few, however, can control the Void. What strength rage gives is lost in a lack of self-restraint. Very few can harness rage and the primal energy of nature in a useful manner. It is a great power even if the companions do not recognize it as such.”

Faris’s jaw relaxed. He had always been able to
see
rage, as if it were a malleable object. He could allow his body to act while his mind remained controlled, free of pain and exploiting the adrenaline and power that rage instilled. Filled with Void he could run like the desert sands could blow.