The Isis Knot (35 page)

Though her body went still with eerie cold, her thoughts drifted to the ferryman and his rings of devotion. “Seth.”

He and I are part of this world. We have fates, like you, designed since Geb and Nut gave us life. We have a beginning and we have an end, like you. The world is a circle. The time of Seth and Isis and Osiris has passed. But it will come again.

Ramsesh was still reeling from the sound of Isis’s voice within her mind, but she gathered her thoughts and pieced together the goddess’s meaning. “When? When will it come again?”

A very long time from now, when the world will not be as it is now.

Tears pressed against her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

You do not have to, my daughter. I know my fate. I have accepted it. But Seth has not. He is angry at those who have turned his followers against him. He wants vengeance against those who have disregarded him. He wants to remain in his place. He wants to be worshipped.

She gasped, fearful. “What will he do?”

He wants my power of life, of healing. He wants to possess the opposite of his own abilities. When he has taken it, he will be both chaos and stability, death and life. He will hold complete control and no one will be able to ignore him. He will then shape himself into a new god and challenge those whose beliefs have turned against him.

“A new god?” She tasted dirt as her fingers came to her mouth.

He will bring death and chaos to the world. More than has ever been witnessed before, in any war. When it grows into its most terrible, assuming its most hopeless state, he will wield the power of life he stole from me and watch as the people bow to him as savior. They will not know they kneel before the very being that tried to destroy them.

Ramsesh reeled. “But how can he possibly take what’s yours?”

He has been waiting to come here, into my temple, to face me. I am diminishing. I am weak, but while my effigy still stands in this shrine he cannot step foot on the island. Tomorrow, when the Romans remove my effigy and turn this temple into something else, I will be unguarded. I am not strong enough to defeat my brother. Not alone.

She buried her face in her hands. It was so much to think on. The world was changing too quickly and she stood right on the axis, watching everything spin, unable to focus.

There is something else. Tuthotsut.

She let her hands fall to her lap. “You worry about the mad ferryman?” She gasped, realizing. “Of course. He’s a follower of Seth.”

He is more than that now. Seth has given his
ka
to Tuthotsut. The ferryman as he was born no longer exists. His body belongs to my brother now. It is how Seth will enter this temple and challenge me.

It explained the look in Tuthotsut’s eyes as he’d stared up at the temple. It explained why he hadn’t stepped foot on Philae himself.

Ramsesh exhaled and stood, showing strength for her goddess, as she knew she should. “What do you ask of me? How can I help you?”

The goddess paused and the weight of that pause made the very air feel heavy.
What will you do, my daughter?

“To keep you protected, to keep the world safe from Seth’s wrath and deception, I will do anything.”

You give me your trust, your love. Still. You are the last of my faithful, Ramsesh, and now I give something to you in return.

Isis’s effigy exploded with light. It burned from red to yellow to white. Ramsesh blinked hard against it, but the light continued to flicker behind her eyelids.

Something landed with a thud at her feet. Sand and dust tickled her nose. She knuckled her eyes then opened them. Though the statue’s light had faded, something glowed on the ground. It was a gold cuff, a hand’s width long but delicate. The knot of Isis was carved on the top, images of Seth and Isis on the underside. It lay open on the sand, its hinges and clasp invisible. Magical.

For you.
Isis’s voice wavered.
Hide it. Protect it.

“What is it?”

It is me. It is what Seth wants. It is all my power. My healing, my fertility, my protection, my gift of life.

Ramsesh looked into the goddess’s disfigured face, utterly speechless.

It is linked to you now, to your
ka
and your
ka
alone.

She thought of Tuthotsut waiting for her back in the boat. She’d come across the water bearing bread; she couldn’t return with this beautiful gold piece the likes of which only the pharaohs had worn. “Tuthotsut…”

… will not know. Keep your sleeves pulled down over your hands. He thinks you a commoner and will never venture to guess what has transpired here. But when the Romans remove my effigy and he comes here, he will find emptiness, a gate to nothing. My powers will have disappeared. By then you will be gone.”

“Gone?”

Sweet child. Dear believer. I am always stronger in the hands of my children. Through you, I am manifest. Through you, I will complete the circle meant for me. I trust you to know what to do.

But she didn’t. She felt faint and overwhelmed, and was starting to think she’d gone mad. Or that she was still back in her home, lying in Amonteh’s arms and dreaming.

“And my husband?”

He believes as you do.
Ramsesh thought she heard a smile in Isis’s voice.
Amonteh will be your Osiris. Go back to him. Lie with him, take him into your body as a wife does with her husband, and I will make him into your Osiris. Together you will protect me from Seth. This I ask of you.

Ramsesh still didn’t quite understand. She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but the temple dove into darkness. The glow of the gold cuff died and Isis’s statue returned to red-gold stone, layered in shadow. The world seemed to churn and Ramsesh steadied herself with a hand on Isis’s carved toes.

Why had
she
been chosen for such a huge responsibility, such a grand gift? The wonder of it all rooted her in place, and all she could do was look from gold to effigy and back again. If she left the gold on the ground and ran out of the temple now, she could safely return to Amonteh before the sun god awakened.

If she left the gold on the ground and ran out of the temple now, Tuthotsut or one of the Roman centurions could enter here tomorrow and take the gold for himself. By doing that, she would have betrayed Isis.

Who was she to defy her goddess? Who was she to refuse such trust?

She picked up the cuff and cradled it in both hands. Shifting its feather weight to one palm, she tilted it over her forearm and watched it snap around her skin, sealing itself with an eerie fit. A hum emanated from it, entering her body from the pulse at her wrist. Isis flowed into her, through her, made the air buzz like insects.

Though the shock and the magnitude of this responsibility threatened to steal her consciousness, she bravely beat it back and stood tall, pulling the long sleeves of her sheath down over her fingertips.

She turned and hurried back through the outer shrine, into the great pillared hall, and beneath the two pylons. She raced past the colonnades. To the east, the first pink lines of light appeared over the hills. Re was awakening. She had to return home.

And Tuthotsut was her only means.

Tuthotsut.
Seth
.

The ferryman perched in his boat, gnawing on his fingernails. When he saw her he jumped to his feet, almost upending the vessel. The whites in his eyes gleamed.

She froze, water lapping over her toes and panic setting in. The sight of him made her want to dive off the wall and swim to shore. She wanted to turn around and run back to Isis’s stone arms.

“Have you finished?” His voice sounded different to her now. Hollow. Inhuman.

She was being foolish. Her hesitation could tell him what had truly happened in the temple. She must act as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. It took all her effort not to touch the gold cuff underneath her billowing dress. Opening her hands, empty and, thankfully, not shaking, she looked him directly in his disconcerting eyes. “Yes. I left
hetep
and prayed.”

“And did she answer your prayers, young one?” His stare probed her like icy fingers. Could he see what was inside her now, the magic that she carried? Would he kill her for it?

“She was silent,” Ramsesh replied, forcing disappointment into her sigh.

Tuthotsut cocked his head, his long hair swinging, and bent for the oars. She forced herself onto the boat and took her seat in the bow. A glance over her shoulder revealed the ferryman watched her and not the water, and she trained her eyes on the bank, willing it to move closer, faster. She gripped the fabric of her dress so tightly her hands cramped.

But anticipation and nervousness made her careless. Before the boat ran aground near the shore she stood. Tuthotsut ordered her to sit but the sound of his voice only made her want to disobey. To run. The boat rocked violently then struck mud. She jumped out.

Warm water soaked her sandals and rose halfway up her calves. She pushed through the shoreline reeds, but one tangled around her ankle, twisting her to the side and pitching her forward. She fell hard on her elbow and hip.

The force shoved up the long sleeve of her dress. Across the water, Re stretched and yawned. Pale light touched the cuff and it flashed gold and brilliant.

Tuthotsut howled.

His body shimmered and separated into two images, one overlaid upon the other. Still the bedraggled ferryman from Nubt…but also a screaming giant of a man with the head of long-nosed beast and a swishing, arrow-tipped tail.
Seth
.

Though pain lanced up Ramsesh’s leg, it was terror in the face of the god of chaos that truly paralyzed her.

He leaped onto shore and bore down upon her. She tried too late to scrabble away and he fell on her, the force knocking out her breath. Isis had chosen poorly. Ramsesh was weak and riddled with fear. Already she had failed her goddess.

“Isis…” she managed to hiss in a fearful prayer.

Tuthotsut clamped her body between his thighs. He grabbed her arm bearing the cuff with both hands. His palm covered the Isis knot, and the shape of the symbol burned into his skin like hot coals. He tried to pull the gold over her hand. She writhed, fought, and the cuff did not budge.

Seth’s power slammed into her. She could feel it reaching inside her body, trying to steal her
ka
. Trying to steal what harbored Isis’s magic.

But Isis met him head-on. The goddess soared inside Ramsesh, resisting Seth. Seth increased his power. A battled raged inside her body—more pain and sound than she thought she could bear. Death and life pushed and pulled in a violent ebb and flow.

“Isis!” she cried, a wail of the defeated.

She sensed Isis’s imminent loss. Seth’s rage was simply too powerful.

Until Ramsesh realized that she owed her goddess more than surrender. Isis had trusted her, and Ramsesh owed her bravery.

“Help…me!” she yelled into the night.

He has left himself unguarded
, came Isis’s voice in her mind.
Take what he has not protected. Take his power.

Ramsesh felt it then—the blind physical violence Tuthotsut used against her left his ethereal being open and unprotected, primed for an attack.

Take his power. Take his chaos and his control over death. Or else he will take and use you.

She acted on instinct and out of sheer terror. With all her strength, Ramsesh thrust her
ka
outward, wielding it as a weapon. She couldn’t see it as it wrapped around the ferryman’s body, but she felt it invade his skin. She felt it seep into his own unguarded
ka
.

Using Isis as a tether to keep her anchored to her own body, Ramsesh let her
ka
fill Tuthotsut. Consuming him. His crazed eyes widened as he realized his mistake, how he’d been focused on overpowering her physically and had left his divine magic undefended.

Ramsesh
pulled
with all her might, the strength of a goddess at her back, and
took
Seth’s powers.

Now stripped of his control over death and chaos, the ferryman’s weathered face turned the color of ash. Seth’s
ka
still roiled inside him, but it was powerless now. Tuthotsut convulsed, his eyes rolling back into his head, and collapsed off her. The great image of the beast twitched and flickered and faded.

This time Ramsesh’s terror propelled her to her feet, and she didn’t think of anything else but running.

CHAPTER 22

A crash jolted Amonteh awake. Rising to one elbow, he watched Ramsesh stumble through the front room toward him. Her braids were in disarray, the bottom part of her dress and cloak were soaking wet, and tears drew wet lines down her dusty cheeks. But it wasn’t her appearance that frightened him so much as the alarm in her eyes.

Amonteh came to his knees and caught her as she fell onto the mat beside him. “What happened?” She shook like the crops submitting to a seasonal wind. He smoothed errant braids from her face. She wouldn’t look at him.

Outside, the first rays of light graced the homes just opposite their narrow lane. His wife had been awake for a long time. Awake and outdoors, while he’d slept like Osiris, the god of the dead. She’d always teased him about his ability to drop into so deep a sleep, and he’d always taken it with humor. But not now.