ERMUN RAN THE whetstone along the arc of his khopesh. There was an art to honing the curve of a blade, a commitment that required patience and precision. The priest had been bringing the gods glory for nearly forty years by now, and knew the task well. Well enough that between passes, he could stoop over for a squint at the papyrus laid on the planks.
All through the five days they’d sailed the Nile, Ermun had plied the text, and yet the papyrus stubbornly kept its secrets. A good deal of the scroll had rotted and crumbled away over the centuries. What sections remained were largely blank, the ink smudged from countless fingertips tracing crucial lines of text. Only a few parts could be made out, and among them, one name in particular.
“Sethherkepeshef Meryamun,” muttered the priest. It had been his constant refrain ever since Eleazar had passed the scroll into his care, and the only fruit the decayed text had borne.
By midday, they would reach Memphis. The other mercenaries were cheery at the prospect of civilization after a long campaign season. Reed boats passed with growing frequency, all rowing downriver for fresh loads of festivalgoers. Kalab shouted greetings, eagerly asking after the availability of girls and beer in the city. “Plenty of both!” the boatmasters called back, tossing over some of the flower garlands that festooned their hulls. Although the morning was young, the mercenaries’ necks were heavy with strings of blue lilies. Yesbokhe, still looking a bit blue himself, had busied himself fashioning flower crowns for everybody, but Nawidemaq had claimed them all for himself. A good dozen of them teetered on his head as he wound garlands around his bull’s horns. The animal eyed the flowers hungrily but contented himself with nibbling at the loose petals coating the deck. Further aft, Amani whirled her sling and cast a whistling stone across the water. Her deftly aimed shot caught a heron mid-flight. The other mercenaries whooped as the bird flopped into the Nile. Tariq dove in to fetch it. He swam the full distance submerged and at last surfaced directly beneath the fallen bird, an astounding feat which the rest applauded. The girl thief watched him sidelong while he swam back, a fact that the rest of them pretended not to notice. Except Qorobar. “Young love,” he said softly. He added a wriggling perch to his basket and cast another line.
Then there was Pisaqar. The captain had been leaning on the railing ever since the gleaming white pyramids had appeared through the haze of dust. Even the younger mercenaries had seen the great edifices enough times by now that they no longer noticed them, but Pisaqar gazed on them with such unblinking raptness that his eyes must have been aching. Ermun spoke again, more out of concern for him than a desire to make conversation.
“Have they changed since the last time you saw them?”
Pisaqar smiled over at him. “They have been there for almost two millennia, my friend. They will always be there. I still enjoy gazing on their majesty. And what of your work on the papyrus? Any revelations?”
“None whatsoever. I know the same things I did the first time I laid eyes on this cursed thing. The man buried was King Ramesses, Eighth of His Name. He was fond of onion bread. And astronomy, also. No mention of tomb or temple. We know the offerings he demanded for his ka, but not the offering place. Maddening.” He set his khopesh down so he could stand. When he stretched his arms, his aging bones creaked. “Truth be told, I’m not altogether disappointed in this scroll’s lack of answers.”
“There are other ways to glean the information,” said Pisaqar.
“Yes, there are indeed. But that isn’t what I was speaking of.”
Pisaqar made a face. “I know that. I was giving you an out.”
“Were you, now?”
“To spare us both an awkward talk.”
“Yet it’s one we must have. Matters have changed, Pisaqar. To be released from the pharaoh’s service, that was not unexpected, not after Taharqa moved on from Jerusalem without us.”
“It came as a surprise to me,” Pisaqar muttered bitterly and—Ermun thought—sadly, too.
“But now we find that we are being pursued, it seems by Taharqa’s own cavalry. Should that not give us pause?”
“I did take pause, my old friend. Two days we spent winding through the Delta, and there has not been a sign of those horsemen in the three days since. We have shaken them off. You know that. Just as I know that you have harbored doubts about this venture from the beginning. Thirty years together, Ermun. Your heart is not a secret to me.”
Ermun looked out over the shimmering green waters. Beyond, on the highest swell of the western bank, loomed the necropolis and its jewels: the pyramids. The great monuments jostled for space on the plateau, each more enormous than the last. The rising sun cast their smooth white limestone sides into relief, and shone brightly on the golden capstones surmounting each. The mind struggled to reconcile their mountainous scale with their human artifice. And their age was a fact that defied easy comprehension, even for a learned man such as he. The pharaoh whose resting place they sought had walked the land some four centuries past, a long enough span. Yet the pyramids had been built by the greatest of pharaohs some fifteen hundred years prior to Ramesses the Eighth’s birth—and so predated humble Ermun by nearly two thousand years. That impossible span was more staggering still when one saw how little affected the huge pyramids were. Their limestone casings looked to be every bit as smooth as the day they’d been anchored in place. That men—ancient men—could build such things was a fact that had never failed to stagger Ermun.
Yet his acolyte didn’t seem to notice them at all. Kalab was busy trading wicked jests with Tariq in a vain effort to win back Amani, a struggle he wouldn’t admit he’d lost. Girls, beer, and swordplay. He thought of little else.
“I worry for the boy,” he told Pisaqar. “That’s the root of it.”
Pisaqar followed his gaze, puzzled. “Kalab, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“He can scarcely be called a boy,” his friend chuckled. “Twenty-five Inundations, he’s seen! Nearly half of them with you.”
“Oh, he is grown, true enough. He has a strong arm, that boy. And he’s a better fighter than you were at his age.”
“Let us not say things we will regret,” smiled Pisaqar.
“But his mind! So very uninquisitive. He might know the prayers, but he has never cared about the reasons we say them.”
“I daresay you have just described most priests in Egypt, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“And that is likely true,” admitted Ermun. “Maybe my age has made me prone to bouts of lament. Even so, that boy is an acolyte, meant to honor the gods and their laws. Yet he was the first to jump at the chance to rob a god-king’s resting place. Have men always been this easily corruptible?”
Pisaqar mulled this over. “I feel you judge your acolyte too harshly, Ermun. After all, you agreed to this venture too.”
The priest wagged his finger. “Ah, but I made you work hard to convince me!” His smile faded. “Pisaqar, I must be serious. I am deeply troubled. Nawidemaq has persuaded you all that we still serve a higher cause, but he is mistaken. This thing we do, it’s simple greed. We rob the pharaoh for our own benefit.”
“Which makes us no different from anyone else,” Pisaqar told him steadily.
“Such cynicism fills me with dread. A nation of selfish people is rotten, Pisaqar. Brittle.” He looked at the other mercenaries, still occupied with their play. “I fear for them all.”
Footsteps announced Eleazar’s approach. “How long before we reach Memphis?”
“Another hour,” said Pisaqar.
“Excellent. Priest, have you made progress with the papyrus?”
Ermun exchanged an entertained look with Pisaqar. The twice-traitor seemed to fancy himself some sort of authority figure. Doubtless, that would make for an amusing spectacle when he tried to inflict himself on someone who wasn’t in the mood for him.
“The papyrus hasn’t yielded any useful information,” Ermun told him. “I daresay King Sennacherib’s plans would have been foiled from the start, thanks entirely to his lousy recordkeeping.”
Eleazar had a quick laugh. Probably it was one reason he’d won himself into the Assyrian king’s trust. “I assure you, priest: keep the faith, and your reward will be great. Whatever information that papyrus lacks, my contact in Memphis will deliver.”
Ermun stooped on creaking joints and carefully rolled up the papyrus. “Your man will be no help whatsoever.”
The Israelite raised his thick brows. “Is that so?”
“If he is a tomb builder, as you say—and it seems you are ever brimming with half-truths, so that’s a matter of debate—then he will know how to break into one. That doesn’t mean he’ll know where to find it in the first place.”
“Come now. He and his forefathers built in the Valley of the Kings,” the Israelite noted sourly. “Of course he will know where the tombs were built. It is his profession.”
“You fail to understand: this pharaoh died over four centuries ago. Tombs in the valley are well hidden. Those who build them are sworn to secrecy. No one living can give us the information we seek. I assure you, your man is quite useless in this matter. No, if we’re to know where to look, there’s only one place to go.” To find their answer, they would need to venture into the house of the gods. “The temple of P’tah.”
* * *
Memphis. The White Walls. City of a Hundred Doors.
The Heb Sed festivities were in full swing by the time Pepy-Nakht jostled his boat into a vacant dock, a feat that required the full breadth of the plump sailor’s vocabulary and not a few unsubtle threats besides. It really was remarkable how persuasive a few part-drawn blades could be—Kalab’s khopesh prominent among them.
The moment the dockhands lashed the boat, the other mercenaries sheathed their weapons again and hopped ashore, elated to be on solid ground once more. Pepy laid a ramp and descended into the open hold, where he began to tie the restless donkeys together.
“What will you do with them?” Kalab asked.
“Sell the stinking things,” Pepy replied, though there was no real bite behind the words. “These beasts will chew through the hull if I leave them to it!” He stroked a mane. “I’ll find a dealer of repute, young priest, don’t you fret. They’ll be treated well.”
“Long as they don’t end up in a stew. They bore us across the Sinai without complaint.” Kalab thought. “Well. Some complaint.”
“But remember. These beasts of burden will only fetch so high a price. We’ll have enough bread and beer to get to Thebes, no further. I won’t be able to linger there long without provisions.” The boatmaster’s obsequious grin belied the canny words. “Remind your captain of that, won’t you?”
Kalab clapped Pepy on the arm. “Pisaqar doesn’t need to be told anything twice,” he assured with a grin that was every bit as false. “Farewell.”
He joined Ermun at the far end of the dock, where the old priest was conferring with Pisaqar. The captain handed Ermun a wad of cloth. “This ought to serve as an acceptable offering to Osiris.”
Ermun half-unwrapped it. Inside was a miniature hoard of precious stones—several rubies and an emerald the size of a fingernail. Pisaqar chuckled at the way their jaws dropped.
“Jerusalem may have emptied its treasury to pay Assyria its tribute. But King Hezekiah at least saw fit to scrape together this reward for us.”
Kalab told him, “This could buy us passage all the way to the Second Cataract.”
“Pepy-Nakht’s payment will not be an issue as long as you succeed in your task.” Pisaqar bunched Ermun’s fist around the gemstones and clasped it tight. “Give this up to the Eternal Lord. Do not return with it. Understand?”
The captain spoke with such firmness that Kalab glanced between the two men, wondering what sort of interesting conversation he’d just missed.
Ermun nodded assent. Pisaqar touched his forehead to theirs, then went to gather the others. They would have their own mission to perform that day.
Ermun pulled up his scales to allow Kalab to stuff the treasure into his tunic. Then they set off into the city, toward the looming walls of the great temple.
Pharaoh Shabaku’s jubilee, the Heb Sed, was well under way, and the full population of many tens of thousands thronged the streets. There were minstrels on every corner, their competing tunes echoing down the avenues where listeners flailed and swayed to whichever song caught their fancy. Naked children splashed in the reed-filled canals under the doting eyes of their parents. Packs of adolescent boys swaggered along, each youth trying to outshine the next in a largely fruitless effort to capture a girl’s interest. Men and women alike crowded around the many beer stalls. The drinks were courtesy of the pharaoh himself. Everyone was raring to get their god-king’s money’s worth.
Kalab and Ermun drew more than a few eyes as they pressed through gaps in the crowd. It was little surprise; the pair made for a wildly incongruous sight. Their black-as-night skin marked them out as Kushites. Their shaven heads and leopard-skin cloaks made them priests—but also warriors, because each wore the white feather of a soldier in his headband. And then there were the Assyrian scales they’d donned, which no one had a clue how to interpret. If anyone thought of troubling them, though, they refrained. Would-be heroes held their tongues, prostitutes kept to their doorsteps, and the masses evidently decided it best not to ask khopesh-wielding priests for a word of blessing. For the second time today, Kalab counted himself amused at the power of a sheathed blade.
The crowds gradually parted. Up ahead, the Temple of P’tah beckoned them closer. Its monolithic walls were at least the height of ten men, easily dwarfing any other structure in the city. Painted hieroglyphs proclaiming the deeds of gods and kings graced the upper reaches of each facade, while above them, countless pennants of every hue slithered on their poles. Kalab had been to this temple countless times but couldn’t help being overawed at the sheer audacity of the structure, built on such scale upon the soft silt of the Nile’s banks. Carved steps lifted him from the casual squalor of the city, eyed the whole way by rows of vigilant sphinxes. To either side of the main entrance, itself wide enough for two wagons to pass through side by side, were a pair of obelisks hewn from polished basalt, adorned with tall columns of hieroglyphs limned in gold. Beyond these stone sentinels, common folk were not permitted to pass, so the platforms were piled with offerings of food, garments, and candles—the modest sorts of things low-born Egyptians could afford. And of course, beside each gift was a tablet or scroll that asked the gods for a boon in return. Religion could be quite transactional, Kalab found. Not that his purpose was any different.
The Temple of P’tah was not a single structure, but a grand complex that housed both the gods themselves and the bureaucracy that sustained them. The main entrance brought Kalab and Ermun into an office space rather than some holy sanctum. Scribe-priests were ensconced behind vast desks heaped with offerings, which they meticulously logged on papyrus scrolls before passing them to servants to be organized and warehoused. The whispers echoing through the chamber were not chanted prayers, but arithmetic. Festivals were busy times for these administrators, surpassed only by the harvest.
They passed through the busy offices and onto a colonnade, whose thick pillars buttressed a ceiling crowded with painted scenes from myth, the background colored in dazzling blue to mimic the sky. The courtyard outside, like the foyer, was a practical space. Vacant silos awaited the coming grain tax, Egypt’s true source of wealth. Since the harvest wouldn’t come for many months, the priesthood had converted the space into a paddock, where goats and cattle nosed around every cranny for stray kernels left over from the past season. Acolytes tended to the herds, carrying staves and shovels and looking hideously bored. They scrutinized Kalab’s armor and sword with undisguised envy.
As they drew nearer to the heart of the temple, statues began to appear between the columns—humanoid shapes with the heads of falcons, rams, lions, bulls, jackals, crocodiles. All were studiously clean from the morning rituals, with bread bowls and beer mugs laid at their feet. There were amulets about their necks, and cloaks of animal skins draped across their shoulders. Ermun and Kalab played their small part in the observances by bowing before each statue.
After much meandering, they arrived at the House of Sekhmet. The lion goddess’s place was a surprisingly modest building on the far side of a square courtyard. Her house was rather nondescript, but the half dozen alabaster sphinxes guarding the courtyard made it unmistakable. Each statue was nearly thrice Ermun’s height, with such astonishingly lifelike features that they seemed likely to pounce given half a reason. As a precaution, the two of them bowed carefully to each sphinx they passed. It didn’t pay to take the risk of offending such deadly creatures. The pair made a final obeisance in front of the dwelling place of the warrior goddess herself, leaving a jar of beer and a bronze dagger on her doorstep to appease her bellicose spirit.
Beloved as Sekhmet was of the Kushites, they hadn’t come with her in mind. It was her son, Osiris, that they sought. The entrance to his vaults was sequestered in the corner of the courtyard, where steps descended steeply into the temple’s foundations. It was possible to make out maybe the first ten steps before darkness swallowed up the rest. The sconces hadn’t been lit; evidently visitors were not welcomed.
Ermun took the plunge with hardly a pause. Kalab savored one last look at the open sky before following his teacher into the bowels of the temple. Within moments, he found himself enveloped in growing blackness, which squeezed him tighter with every step as he drew further from the sunlight. At the same time as sight abandoned him, his hearing conspired against him, amplifying his and Ermun’s footfalls into a muffled cacophony. Wind drew at the tunnel entrance, sounding for all the world like some vast creature’s breathing. Ahead and below, in the invisible depths of Osiris’s domain, he could hear whispering—whether real or imagined, he couldn’t quite guess. The musk of dry decay and salt singed his nostrils.
Kalab gripped his khopesh tightly and trusted his feet, which twelve years of swordplay had made sure and precise. Soon enough, his heel came down hard on level ground. Ermun hissed as the acolyte bumped into his back.
“Wait.” After a pause, the priest struck a flint. A shower of sparks illuminated the tunnel for just an instant, enough to leave the afterimage of a narrow, straight tunnel etched into Kalab’s eyes. He placed a hand on Ermun’s shoulder and stepped past him into the lead, gripping his weapon handle. He slowly paced down the passage with his fingertips grazing the smooth walls. Here, deep in the house of the Undying Lord, even the sound of the sucking breeze had vanished. Kalab’s rasping breaths were loud in his ears. He timed them to match his careful footsteps. The rhythm lent him some welcome calm.
When he saw light ahead, he almost mistook it for a trick of his mind. “Is that torchlight?” he whispered.
“The sanctum.”
The sanctum was a round chamber with a domed roof and seven doorways, all open except the largest: a double door, barred and chained. Its brass panels were reliefs depicting Osiris’s death, dismemberment, and resurrection. The air was hot and thick from burning sconces, the first sign that any other souls were present in this place. But if the mortuary priests were here, they didn’t show themselves.
They bowed to Osiris’s door and then circled the chamber to inspect the open doorways. Most of the rooms were rather banal—sleeping quarters, a few storerooms. The chamber they sought stood apart: the vault. It was filled with not riches, but knowledge—logged on papyri and crammed into hundreds, even thousands of round niches chiseled into the sandstone walls. Claustrophobic passageways with low ceilings branched off, their depths lost in a maze of right angles despite the ample torchlight.
“Beer?” Ermun inquired. He held out a skin.
“What? We have work to do.”
“Aye, and it’ll take a good while. No, then?”
“I’d rather keep my wits,” Kalab said. “The sooner we’re out of this place, the better.”
The priest chuckled. “Ah, the callowness of youth. Suit yourself.” He took a deep draught and stepped into the vault, already peering into niches as he corked the beer.
However dim their expectations, the task proved more daunting still. Without a catalogue to guide their search, Kalab and Ermun were obliged to pull the papyri from their niches by the armful, unroll each one, and read the hieratic script by flickering firelight. The exhaustive work devoured the hours, though the only way to guess at the passage of time was by how often they had to pause to feed the flames. The papyri were remarkably uniform in terms of content: they were mortuary scrolls, listing the names and last wills of the dead, logged with all the meticulousness and formality of a bureaucratic apparatus. The scribes had paid special attention to the funerary rites, logging the gifts of grain, beer, and treasure the departed took with them to the afterlife—for the temple was owed a portion of each. Death was no escape from taxes.
As they combed through the archives, they slowly deciphered the way the priests had organized the records. The most recent scrolls were those nearest the door, so the pair slunk into the further reaches of the labyrinth, where the papyri were old enough to flake apart as they were unrolled. Commoners’ scrolls were relegated to niches near the sandy floor, while the ones closer to the ceiling, where the air was driest, were reserved for the high-born dead. Kalab was constantly teetering on a stool, armpit deep in recesses. His shaking fingers brushed aside cobwebs and scorpions to dig out papyri half-buried in centuries of dust. His armor and sword he removed and left piled together at a junction beside Ermun’s. His white tunic became streaked with dust, which turned to dark grime as his sweat soaked through the linen. His coughing kicked up dust, which he inhaled, provoking more of the same—a fine addition to this ouroboros of misery.
And then, finally—finally—they found the mortuary scroll they sought. It was a plain thing, outwardly indistinguishable from the thousands that packed this cursed library. Whichever priest had stored it hadn’t even bothered to put it in the correct niche, but rather a middle one among papyri perhaps three hundred floods old.
“Sethherkepeshef Meryamun!” exclaimed Ermun, jabbing a knobby finger at the pharaoh’s cartouche, his stylized name. “Well done, boy! This is the one!”
Kalab clapped his hands, not out of joy—he was far past any semblance of positivity at the moment—but to rid his protesting joints of some caked-on dust. “Let’s take the thing and be gone.”
“No, boy. This belongs to the temple. We needn’t be quick to deepen our indebtedness to the gods. We copy this down, word for word. After that, we may leave.”
They placed the papyrus on one of the desks built into the wall and unrolled it with infinite care. The scroll was warped from centuries of dry rot. It bulged out, so that they had to lay twenty stones along its edges to persuade it to lie flat. They winced every time it cracked. The archaic, faded script defied easy reading. The two resorted to reading troublesome sections aloud in order to agree on the wording.
“What’s this say about grain?”
“I’m still stuck on this passage here, teacher. Something to do with taking away … difficult vapors?”
“Removing troublesome vapors, I would hazard. I come away with the suspicion that our Ramesses was especially fond of drink.”
“I refuse to think it. I won’t believe we’ve spent all this time chasing down some dead guy’s favorite beer recipe.”
“There’s a little more. See here—ta dehent, it says. The Peak.”
“Awfully vague. Which peak? Egypt has a few of them.”
“The one that watches over the Valley of the Kings. And look, see this passage? There’s mention of a slope.”
“And a cleft. Suppose we’ll be looking for a hill shaped like an ass.”
“Well, there’s no need to be vulgar, boy.”
“You’re not the one covered in dust and scorpion bites!”
“Ah, see, now this part could prove be useful. A star chart. Here the author references the Pole Star. During Inundation … place above the left shoulder…”
Kalab sniffed. “Do you smell burning?”
They exchanged a troubled look and swiveled their heads back the way they’d come.
A humanoid figure was standing in the passage, jackal-headed, smoke curling from its shoulders, its fingers ending in long black talons. An Anubis. Watching them.
A lance of atavistic terror stabbed through Kalab’s heart, driving all thought from his head save the urge to flee. That same terror rooted him to the spot, helpless as a lamb on an altar. The gods had seen his sin-laden heart and come to claim him.
Ermun’s voice drew him back from the verge of animal panic. “Why do you trouble us?” he asked the Anubis. Somehow, his voice didn’t waver.
The figure spoke in a low, echoing voice. “That is for the Lord of Life to ask of you.”
A priest of Osiris. Kalab could have perished of relief.
Ermun gathered his thoughts for a moment. “We’ve come to inquire after a ka, in order to pay tribute. We’ve brought an offering of our own.”
The jackal priest said nothing, but lifted one palm in a half-circle, indicating they should finish their task. Relieved, the two turned back to their work. They conferred in rapid whispers.
“How long has he been standing there?” hissed Kalab.
“I have no idea. We must assume he was watching us for a good while.”
“He might have heard it all. What do we do?”
Ermun sighed glumly. “What option is there? We must wait and see what happens.”
When they were confident they’d finished transcribing the full text, they rolled the mortuary scroll up again and placed it back in its niche. Then they went to join the visitor, who hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time. He led them back through the passages, pausing midway to allow them to gather the items they’d discarded. If he noted their foreign armor, he didn’t see fit to question it.
Back at the sanctum, the double doors were opened, and the statue of green-skinned Osiris was bared. There were glistening entrails laid in bowls at his feet, and he wore necklaces of precious stones. Kalab and Ermun approached him, stopping and bowing every three paces. They prostrated themselves before the god, the earthy scent of intestines heavy in their nostrils. The jackal priest’s heavy presence lingered behind them while they paid their respects. Beneath the gaze of a god and his sinister representative, Kalab felt his neck hairs standing on end. The place reeked of magic.
“You have come in pursuit of a ka,” boomed the jackal priest. “Speak its true name, then, and Osiris will summon it before you.”
Kalab was glad to have his face pressed up against the floor; it hid his wince. “You wily bastard,” he mouthed.
Ermun faced the priest and said deferentially, “I’m pleased to say that we’ve learned much from the scrolls we found. We need not trouble the Lord of Rebirth.”
“Speak the name!” barked the jackal.
Ermun’s expression was full of despair, though only one who knew the man well could have seen it. There was no question of lying in the physical presence of Osiris, who alone possessed the power to raise souls in the afterlife. And the reverse was equally true. Faced with the obliteration of his immortal ka, Ermun had no choice.
He raised his chin. “Sethherkepeshef Meryamun.”
The jackal priest, though motionless, seemed to coil up on hearing the royal name. For long moments, he stood rigid. Without a word, he started toward Ermun. Kalab scuffled to his feet and went for his khopesh—but the priest skirted around and retrieved a box from Osiris’s pedestal, whispering unintelligibly in the confines of his mask. He opened the box to reveal a fine powder, the same pallorous green as the god’s skin. He moved with slow purpose, sprinkling it in a circle around Ermun’s feet. He replaced the box, faced him once more, and spread his arms wide.
His shriek tore through the dense air and shattered the quiet. “Osiris! Lord of Rebirth! I summon the ka of Sethherkepeshef Meryamun! Bring him forth from the twilight! Make him a home of my flesh! This we ask of you!”
He threw his head back. All at once, he began to shudder. His torso writhed, his limbs flailed, his fingers bent into claws. His deafening scream reverberated around the sanctum. The air rippled, and the flames guttered in their sconces. The priest’s scream assailed their ears for an unnaturally long time. Even when his lungs were empty of air, his throat still fought to produce sound.
Then he slumped onto his knees, motionless. His ribcage flexed. He drew a harsh, rattling breath, as if it was his first. Then, still bunched into a ball, he whispered, “Who disturbs me?” His voice was different—high pitched and reedy. “Who has brought me forth?”
Fresh rivulets of sweat ran down Kalab’s spine. He could have no doubt that they were facing a pharaoh’s ka, hauled back from the afterlife to confront the men who were about to deprive him of it forever.
Ermun visibly swallowed, undoubtedly wrestling with the same knowledge. “We are supplicants,” he replied. “We have come bearing tribute.” The words were vague enough that they managed not to qualify as lies.
The ka swayed on its knees and spoke haltingly. “Long have I lingered without tasting tribute. My form is without vitality. I am withered.” It raised one arm and turned the hand, studying it with jealous curiosity. “Why have you come after so much time, when I am reduced to a husk?”
Kalab saw the opening and rushed to answer. “You’re diminished because your resting place has been forgotten. No one knows where to make sacrifices for you.”
The ka didn’t react in any way. It continued to rock on its knees and stare up at Ermun in wary expectation. Kalab remembered the green circle. “Tell it what I just said!”
Ermun repeated the words. This time the ka seemed to hear.
“You seek my tomb?” it rasped. Ermun and Kalab looked at each other, uncertain how to reply. “You seek my tomb!” The voice gained strength and volume as the ka grew wise to their game. It pointed an accusing finger at Ermun. “Liar! Thief! You wish to desecrate me!”
Ermun could only stand aghast, unable to contest the accusation—because it was true. And Osiris was watching.
The ka’s anger deepened into apoplexy. “Your wickedness shall carry its own reward, heretic! In the name of Osiris—”
“Shit,” Kalab and Ermun muttered.
“—I curse the fruits of your foul endeavor! He who profits by me shall reap his own end! May his triumphs crumble to ash. May his wives be made barren. May his children perish. May his allies betray him. May his lands be ripped from him and given to his enemies. May he die without comfort or honor. May his ka be severed from his form. May he wander sightless for all eternity. Let utter ruin be the price of treachery! The Lord, Anubis, shall make it so!”
The two of them stood transfixed in horror, which only became more abject with every word. With a long hiss, the ka departed. The jackal priest visibly regained his form, his shoulders losing their slump and his back straightening. He shook his head to clear the fog and pushed himself standing, regarding them with benign interest through his mask. He appeared unaware of what had just happened.
“Now. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Ermun shambled up to him and opened Pisaqar’s purse with trembling fingers. “For Osiris,” he mumbled, emptying the plundered jewels into the priest’s outstretched palm. The priest bowed gratefully.
“A generous contribution. Osiris is well pleased.”
Then they fled without a backward glance, Kalab clutching his copied scroll tight against his pounding heart.
* * *
The jackal priest watched the visitors go. “Knumhotep, come over here.” His voice was an undignified squeak, broken thrice over. It had been a difficult session. He reflected, not for the first time, that he was far too old to be doing this much yelling.
He drew off his mask and headdress as his acolyte hurried out of the office.
“Teacher,” the boy piped. “Forgive me for failing to chain the door. It won’t—”
“Quit scraping, child. Help me close up the shrine. Then I need you to bring a message to Senanmuht.”
“Taharqa’s man?” his acolyte asked in complete befuddlement. “Forgive me, master, but why not the pharaoh’s sandal bearer? Or the high priest?”
He sighed. The boy was dutiful, yes, but oh so dull. “A wise man keeps his finger to the winds. No, Taharqa must learn of this. It seems some of his fellow Kushites have come calling.”