24 Bones (8 page)

Chapter Ten

T
he disc’s chime gradually quieted, and Faris waited for a response to its tone.

“Hello?” The voice came from beyond the rock plug.

Faris turned on his flashlight and studied the stone, pushing at it. It held firm. The rock was pink and flecked with silica that sparkled in the light. Chisel marks pocked its slightly bulging surface. A thin seam marked where it met the tunnel wall. His fingers strained against the unyielding rock.

“Hello?” the voice asked again.

“Yes, I am here,” Faris replied, brow pinching.

“Are you Shemsu Hor?” the voice asked, feminine and gentle.

Faris raised an eyebrow. Few knew that they were not simply another monastery in the desert.

“Yes. My name is Faris.”

“Good.” The relief in the voice was palpable. “You must go, I have a job for you,” the voice demanded. Faris blinked at the command. “I am Tara. I am a Sister of Isis.”

Faris had never spoken with a Sister of Isis, but seen some at Akhet ceremonies and knew they lived as a Coptic group of nuns. Her imprisonment meant she was more likely to be a friend than not.

“I am supposed to free you. Someone shoved me into here, a woman, and yet I think one of the Shemsu Seth.”

He thought he caught a sob muffled by the granite, but when she spoke again her voice was strong.

“Do the companions protect the vertebrae of Osiris?”

He hesitated but could think of no reason not to tell her. “It is being assembled, yes, but the Shemsu Seth stole at least four pieces when they killed the younger companions.” Faris suddenly realized Askari’s mistake. The keepers and high priests were not the only ones with knowledge of the vertebrae’s locations. The sisters guarded the tablet, and recorded upon it was more than simply the prophecy, but the location of each piece.

“They are killing the …?” Tara’s voice faltered.

“How did the Shemsu Seth find the locations of the vertebrae?” Faris’s head tilted, and he gave the stone plug a wolfish stare. “Hundreds have died, Sister.”

“We haven’t time to discuss the sisters’ involvement. We must keep the remaining vertebrae and, above all, the spinal cord from Pharaoh’s grasp.”

“They have the sisters’ portion?” Silence trailed Faris’s question, and he flexed his jaw. “What would the Shemsu Seth do with the Osiris?”

“They wish to break the prophecy.”

“Then why not simply make sure we can’t find Seth’s piece or destroy it? And if they wish to bring Osiris back, why not work together to restore the Osiris as we have in the past?”

Distant barking echoed down the corridor.

“Leave now before they find you,” Tara hissed.

“But how? How can I escape?”

“Go back the way you came.”

“You’re supposed to know the way. The woman said you would show me the exit.”

A long pause followed.

“The door through which you entered, it will have a latch, a small scorpion’s tail, find it. It will open the door.”

Faris turned on his light and ran it over the slab before him. In the corner of the plug was inset a tiny tail.

“I found one on this door, too,” he yelled. “What do I do with the tail to open the door?” He traced its edge with his finger.

“Do not free me,” Tara shouted. The dogs’ barking grew louder.

Faris swore. “No, let me in.” Faris pressed at the scorpion tail.

“You cannot.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“I need your help, Faris. Find a man named David Nidaal. He will come to my home across from Abu Serga, apartment 2, in Coptic Cairo. Take him back to your deir. Tell him …” She paused and he’d thought she was gone, but then suddenly she continued, stronger than before. “Tell him that what he seeks lies with the priest’s last duty. Don’t let the tablet fall into the hands of the Shemsu Seth.” The words were an urgent rush. “They still require it.”

“I can open the door.”

“Leave me.” Overlapping barks punctuated her demand. “The companions will need the tablet to complete the Spine of Osiris too. You must flee. The hounds come. Flee!”

Faris fingered the tail and then hit the stone with his balled fist. He leaned against the granite and then turned.

He extracted a second sundisc. “Re riseth!” The call rumbled in his throat, and he charged, drawing on his reservoir of strength, thrusting into the Void.

Within the Void, Faris saw movement. A wave of his hand bloomed in his mind as a streak of white. His breath was a cone of mist.

The barks grew rabid. The discs glowed with blue fire, illuminating the tunnel.

Faris held the blades outstretched before him as he ran. With the Void, he sensed movement and touched minds. The hounds howled: frenzy, lust, and thrill. His Void-fed rage roared reply. Black hatred hurtled toward him. Three hounds of Seth. Faris curled into a discus thrower’s crouch.

“Re,” he cried and uncoiled. The disc released at knee level. The air reeked of ozone and energy trailed along the walls as the blade spun. He pressed forward, second disc in hand. Ahead, the aten glanced from one wall to the next. It lost momentum. He focused. It missed the first dog and then the second. The third caught the weapon in its mouth and skidded, choking on metal and blood from its severed tongue.

It shook its head and knelt to the ground, paws atop the disc. The disc pulled loose with teeth, tongue, and bits of gums, leaving the dog’s lower jaw to hang. Another presence stooped over the beast and twisted its neck until the dog lay dead. The dwarf patted the hound’s head. Hate, oily and thick, gushed toward Faris.

The first hound lunged for Faris’s throat. He twisted and ran the sundisc across its ribs. Flesh parted and the blade bit bone. Teeth scored his arm, but its momentum carried it past. The dog landed and turned, snarling. The hounds, bred to fight, had hides that tore easily and made them difficult to grip with teeth or blade. The second hound slowed. Before and behind, the dogs growled. In the Void’s strange sight, a ghostlike apparition approached.

“This is the best the Shemsu Hor can muster,” the dwarf said. “Half a man?” His laughter echoed from the walls.

Faris delved deeper into Void and launched the sundisc.

The dwarf’s axe blade countered, but the disc still cut into his shoulder as it zinged by. “You’ll regret you missed, sun-dweller.” The dwarf smiled and then sprang.

The dogs leapt.

Faris spun like a figure skater’s scratch spin, outstretched arms tipped with aten. He ground his toe into the mud floor. Blades caught the hounds before the dwarf bowled through him, heedless of the weapons. Faris somersaulted; his breath crushed from his lungs. The dwarf rolled over him and came up in a crouch. Another dog slumped dead; the second limped on three legs.

With the exit clear, Faris sprinted, his longer legs keeping him ahead of the dwarf. Soon, however, his gait widened and his steps shortened. The dwarf closed. As Faris wearied, the Void threatened. It was the longest period he had ever touched it. It urged him deeper, to draw more. Instinctively he pulled back. He retreated on leaden limbs. The dwarf’s axe sliced across his shoulder blades.

Faris bounced from a wall and into the crocodile’s cavern. The dwarf paused at the edge of the tunnel. Faris’s wound burned, but he remained upright. The dwarf didn’t follow him. Still brushing the Void, Faris watched the crocodile lope toward him, and he reached deeper into chaos. He bolted for the cavern’s far wall.

Thump. Thump. Thump, thump. The beast’s claws tore into rock. Faris dove for the blacker rectangle of the far corridor. His robe tugged backwards, caught in mammoth jaws. He teetered on the exit’s lip. The jaws opened, and he tumbled forward. The tunnel shook as the crocodile wedged into the narrow passage. A kaleidoscope of lights and colors danced in Faris’s vision. A dark shadow loomed above. He jerked his legs away. Claws raked at the earth where his limbs had lain.

He squirmed from the fetid breath and hauled himself out of the Void. The crocodile bellowed. Dimly, he heard the dwarf swear and shout at the beast. With the Void flushed from his mind, darkness returned. Faris pushed to his feet, rebounding from the walls as he swayed. His flashlight’s waning beam wavered as he followed the furrow his foot had carved earlier in the night.

Faris reached the base of the forty flights of stairs. He paused to listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing. He started up the steps at a steady jog, but his back wound and the darkness slowed his pace. With a few flights remaining, the first huffs of the dwarf reached up the stairwell. Faris gave a strangled cry and longed to reach for the Void’s vision and energy. He swallowed the urge and climbed with new vigor. Fear ushered into him needed strength. Faris turned up the final flight.

“I’m going to feed chunks of you to Sobek,” the dwarf called.

A single flight separated them.

Faris climbed to the top and then turned. He drew a deep breath and pictured the mass of Void. When he reached into its froth, he hefted a sundisc and hurled it directly at the wall. It ricocheted upon itself back and forth, faster until it was a horizontal line of force. He fired a second aten at the ceiling, leaping back as it shot down. The two blades rebounded and formed a blue cross. The Void filled him, and Faris knew he hadn’t the endurance to resist the well of the Void long, but he had to hold.

Hoarse grunts crested the final turn, and the spectral shape of the dwarf charged halfway up the flight. At the sight of the sundiscs, the dwarf staggered.

Faris stumbled to the stone door.

The flashlight jittered as Faris inspected the wall at the top of the stairway, heart thudding and eyes darting across the broad surface of rock. The light dimmed; its glow would soon be gone. His hand trembled and jerked the beam. At the head of the stairs, a few yards away, the dwarf was blocked only by the slowing sundiscs. The Void-rage insisted Faris dive deeper, but he slowed his breathing and regained control. At last, Faris spotted the scorpion tail. His finger searched the carving for a button or trigger.

A sundisc cracked into the stone beside his head. Fragments shot about the confined space, the trap broken by the dwarf’s axe. Faris released the Void. The dwarf’s cry blended rage, triumph, and pain. Pushing, pulling, and then twisting, the tail finally clicked. Faris dodged to the right as the axeblade whistled. Sparks lit the doorframe as the axe struck stone.

The door banged against the wall of the pylon, its echoes lost in the rush of the Nile. Faris hauled the panel shut and threw his weight upon it as the dwarf swung his axe again. Once more, the blade clanged against rock. The door closed. Faris ran toward the warren of caves. As he ran, he reached out to Askari. He was there, and Faris let the Shemsu Hor’s strength and calm infuse and buoy him.

The Fullness engendered a sense of peace. The wisdom of ancient souls who had once traversed these same paths guided him, and he heard whispers of their thoughts as he ran. He ducked into the first tunnel and took each arm thereafter as if by memory. He ascended and the first whiffs of freedom swept down. The Fullness soothed his aches and injuries. He sprinted and he knew no one, not a dwarf, not a man, could match his speed. He pushed over the lid of a marble coffin and tumbled into a sunlit crypt.

Chapter Eleven

D
avid broke from the claustrophobic grip of the Hanging Church and shivered in the sudden blaze of light. In early evening, the sun remained hot, but cast long shadows from the surrounding buildings.

Feeling guilty about leaving Zahara to stumble about the area without an orientation, David hurried back out of the fortress to the broad steps of St. George in the hopes of a brief talk before his meeting with Tara, a meeting all the more important with Tara’s promise to show him the original engraving and the pope’s warning.

St. George had once been Coptic, but now stood as a seat of Greek Orthodoxy. Expecting to see his girlfriend lounging on the steps, he paused at their base and frowned. Empty. He checked his watch and headed into the nave of the church.

Besides a few bowed heads, none of which shared Zahara’s shiny mane of black tresses, he saw no sign of her. Outside once more, he circled the grounds, finally spotting their small bags near a stone bench. But no Zahara. He fumbled for his phone, annoyed he’d need to suffer the charges associated with an international call and dialed.

Her bag rang three times before he hung up.

“Zahara!” he called. Her name echoed, drawing the attention of a scarf-wearing old woman who lifted her head as if from a doze.

“Have you seen a young, black-haired woman near these bags?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“Do you understand English?”

She shrugged apologetically even after he tried Arabic.

Given Zahara’s interest in antiquities, religion, and archaeology, she could have found any part of the area fascinating and wandered away, but Zahara wasn’t so naive as to leave the bags unattended, was she?

He frowned at them. Aside from toiletries, his contained nothing he’d miss, his passport, money—anything important was in the courier bag slung across his back. But her bags had a cell phone and whatever else she’d packed.

Perhaps its loss might teach her a lesson. He chastised himself for such a patronizing thought and had to admit that he struggled with their relationship. If he didn’t want people to see the age gap, he shouldn’t act like he was her father. He huffed and set off to his second meeting.

As dusk fell, the walls of Coptic Cairo loomed, their shadowy height beyond the reach of streetlights. He stood at the stairs descending to the gate of Babylon, disconcerted over the missing Zahara and his conversation with Shagar. David had translated the stele and knew what it said, but he could not believe in such a prophecy, let alone that he be a part of it. But life had taught him that his beliefs were unimportant to what others thought and did.

He reached into his bag and brought out the translation.

The rubbing had at first frustrated him until he realized that the hieroglyphs read vertically rather than horizontally. At first, the whole thing had appeared as a cryptic word jumble. However, as he began to translate, he found very little of it was in fact unique, a great boon to the process of translation. Most of it was familiar and he read it again now, this time trying to place himself at its heart.

I am the Benu bird, the heart–soul of Re. I write at Philae.

If David was to suspend disbelief, the author claimed to be the risen phoenix. And that he engraved the tablet at Philae. The Temple of Isis on the Island of Philae was the last holdout of the Egyptian religion, the last temple to close by Roman decree.

I am the keeper of the volume of the Tablet of Destiny, of the things which have been made and of the things which shall be made.

Identical text could be found in the Book of the Dead.

Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. The corruptible must put on incorruption, and the mortal must put on immortality. When the corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and the mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory.

David pursed his lips. Did they really believe a mortal could really become immortal? Did they, the Shemsu Seth, think this immortal—a prophet, Osiris—could be one of the Companions of Horus? Is that why they slaughtered the companions? Is that why, as Pope Shagar stated, the Shemsu Seth hunted
him
? David shook his head vigorously. They were insane, drunk on their own religion—one he’d spurned.

Regardless, these words piqued his interest. He wasn’t just reading a prophecy, but perhaps the earliest version of the Bible on record. To translate it, David had drawn the Corinthians text straight from Google. Not a perfect match, but the crux of it was the same.

When the dog-star rises above the companion to matter, the Hall of Ma’at sheds its skin. Reassemble, companions! Reassemble the backbone, Benu’s egg.

Mention of Benu’s egg caught him now. The Benu bird was an early representation of the phoenix. And now the author spoke of its rebirth. Suggesting he would come again. But in what form?

Thou shalt find the Wedjat standing by thee like the watchers. He must gather these in the thousands.

The Wedjat, of course, was a reference to Horus, which in David’s mind was synonymous with Jesus. To David it confirmed further how inextricably linked the two religions were. This seemed to speak of the task of the Wedjat: to gather an army of watchers to defeat Seth.

The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens shall pass away with great noise. From it, a beast shall rise. Power will be given unto him over all kindreds. He will open his mouth in blasphemy and cause the earth to tremble. It will be given unto him to make war with the companions and to overcome them.

Rise up thou, O Osiris, thou hast thy backbone, O Still-heart, thou hast thy neck vertebrae and thy back, O Still-heart! Place thou thyself on thy base. I put water beneath thee.

Parts of the first paragraph seemed to derive from Revelations. But the latter half dealt with the resurrection ritual around Osiris, a ritual that entailed raising a symbolic spine, often a
djed
staff. It was from the Book of the Dead, saying:

And when this is done, there will be a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth will be passed away. And if the heaven is not raised, faith is vain and yet in sin. Then they also who have fallen asleep in faith shall perish.

More biblical scripture, but scripture that seemed tailored to the Osiris and Horus mythology. Or vice versa.

If the scarab shell is unbroken when the Akhet’s bullhorns haul the boat of Horus to Aten, the Benu will be lost and the Halls of Ma’at shall close.

Go in like the hawk and come forth like the Benu, the Morning Star of Re.

And so the translation finished. And with nothing about twenty-four bones.

To David, this was an example of the Christian Judgment Day myth written in an ancient Egyptian script. Nothing short of stunning—and for all of the reasons that Pope Shagar and the Sisters of St. George, including his grandmother, had been long disappointed with his choices. The phrases that weren’t related to the Bible derived from the Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead. Both of these were funerary texts that combined spells and ritual for the journey of an Egyptian soul, or
Ba
, through the underworld.

The last portion contained a most interesting kernel, however. It suggested a timeline to fulfill the prophecy. It answered the question, why it would fall into David’s hands now. Akhet, the ancient Egyptian new year, approached.

Packing away the translation, a thrill ran up his own spine. The blow that this stele could strike would shake the foundation of Christianity. David’s derision for organized religion extended to the Church for good reason. After his failed indoctrination into the Shemsu Hor, he’d been shipped first to England and then to Canada where he attended private boarding schools. Father Trent had been the Headmaster of the Highbury Catholic School, and someone who, at David’s grandmama’s request, had taken a special interest in him.

Late for Mass, David had been regularly tacked, or lashed, by a thin whip of wood. Often the wood would splinter across his back and leave fragments imbedded in his flesh. But worse than the tackings were the runs. Father Trent ran daily, and every Saturday, when most boarders had returned home to their families, David ran with him. Tied to the Father’s waist by a rope, David gasped scripture and ran until he vomited. Father Trent had always completed his task in the moral certitude that David could be saved.

A man carrying a shovel and hauling a bucket of earth shouldered past David. David blinked in the settling dark.

Tara could answer his remaining questions. Now that he’d spoken with Shagar, he knew he wasn’t only here to complete a translation. They had brought him here to help fulfill a prophecy, to take up some connection with Shemsu Hor. He chuckled a little maniacally at the thought.

He checked the address in his pocket again. It was copied in his rushed scrawl onto a slip of paper. He took a last look for Zahara.

Despite the shadows in the tunnel that led into the walled city, the streets at his back were more frightening. David glanced down the narrow paths into a neighborhood of poor apartment blocks. Children played among refuse. Shuttered windows were missing blinds. Steel pipes and wires climbed the raw concrete shells. A figure watched him from a shadow pierced only by a cigarette ember. When his gaze lingered, she stepped forward into the rays of the declining sun.

The woman’s skin held a grayish cast, but even at a distance, her eyes were a startling green. The hijab framed a complexion like cracked glaze, a network of veins meandering over the porcelain sides of her face. He would have sworn the veins glowed faintly. The definition of bone, sinew, and muscle made her skin as translucent as a scorpion’s carapace. David thought her attractive, but too attractive, like a model that skipped past beauty into an alien world. Her skeletal smile erased even this.

Suddenly a vice clamped his chest, finding his heart and almost stopping it as she held his stare. Tired sweat pores reopened and dripped icily from his temples.

He clutched his chest, but not his left side, the right. David had dextrocardia, a rare condition that shifted his heart to the opposite side. Slowly, the tension eased and the woman flicked away the cigarette and returned into the darkness. When he peered after her, it was as if she’d never been.

David used the wall to support himself as he staggered down the steps, other hand rubbing his sternum. As the ache faded, he dismissed the thought that the woman had somehow caused the chest pain. Once under the outer defences, he hurried down a slender cobbled street. Shaken by the experience, he wanted nothing more than to meet Tara, find Zahara, and sink into the hotel hot tub.

Another sheer wall of the fortress climbed on his right; to his left was a synagogue purported to be Egypt’s first. It neighbored St. George’s convent, his childhood home. He now realized the convent was something more. Why would the sisters let his father brand him in their courtyard unless they were a part of the wild religion?

He hugged the wall and slipped past the convent, wanting no part of it. He knew precisely where Tara lived. As a child, he had bounced balls against her home. He suspected she might have seen him then, maybe even scolded him.

Plaster flaked from the alley walls, falling in shards. The street of leading to Tara’s home was dug up to repair pipes that had not existed prior to David’s own flight from Egypt. A couple of scattered picks and shovels leaned against the walls.