The Hound of Kemamonit

by Paul Edwards

  Chapter nine

  I was at the entrance of the great library of the City of Magic. I had carefully opened the door trying to be as quiet as possible. I carefully peeked around the door frame.

  I could see the psychotic librarian Ms. Wilson at her large desk. She was part of the library's search spell, she had been recruited and then incorporated into the spell by my former apprentice Shelley.

  The way the spell was written meant she sort of moved around in time, sometimes appearing as a young woman or other times older.

  She was in her early fifties, she would probably have just found out about her soon to be ex-husbands infidelity, about the time she purchased a large shotgun.

  I grabbed hold of my immense belly and ran across the open area of the library foyer and into the safety of the maze of book shelves.

  "Stop intruder!... I'm warning you... come out or I will release Ammit... the soul eater!"

  I kept running, I heard a low growl in the distance then the clatter of long claws against a stone floor.

  I turned to confront my pursuer.

  It found me in seconds, it slowly approached cautiously putting its black nose against my protruding stomach, it sniffed, then gave me a disapproving look.

  "Geez you should talk," I said as I rubbed the head of a medium sized dog .

  Ammit the soul eater was a black haired mutt, the librarian had named her. I had picked her up at the local animal shelter. I had thought the librarian a bit lonely so I had gotten a dog for her.

  I had been talking to the young lady who ran the place about a dog suitable for guarding, when an adolescent mutt had run up to me and then started pacing back and forth in front of me looking vigilant.

  "Is it a neutered male?' I asked, impressed by its initiative.

  I petted it's head.

  The dog had looked at me with a stern glare of what could only be called professionalism.

  "Oh ya lady... not only that... when they get'em cut off...they... um get like... real mean."

  The young lady made a snarly face and put her hands up like claws.

  The dog gave a short stern bark accenting the young ladies point, then continued to survey all the potential security risks in the area around it.

  "Neutered male my ass," I said as I reached into my pocket for some kibble.

  I realized later the people in those animal shelter's would say anything to get rid of their animals, and the sneaky animals themselves were also not above subterfuge.

  "If I ever find the mutt that knocked you up," I said as I dropped some kibble on the floor.

  Ammit was pregnant like me, the dog that did it must have been some kind of professional burglar because we could not find even a trace of him.

  Ammit sniffed the kibble, then looked up at me cocking her head. She could smell the beef jerky in my pocket.

  "Soul eater huh... Anubis better wrap them in bacon first."

  I gave her a small piece of the jerky which she downed in a single gulp.

  I pulled a papyrus scroll from a handbag I had slung over my shoulder, then held it in front of her. Ammit began delicately sniffing it, she looked like a scholar reading a complicated research paper.

  Then she was off. bounding away while barking madly.

  "Wait!" I yelled.

  She stopped in her tracks, looked back at me and gave a snort of disgust as she saw me waddling after her. She slowed her pace to a walk.

  I had discovered her brilliant nose when I had been looking for a lost sock. I had let her sniff the remaining one out of mild curiosity.

  She instantly had turned into a fury of snorting and snuffling dog as she ran around the house, five minutes later she returned with the missing sock in her mouth.

  Then she wouldn't give it to me, I had spent an hour running around the house trying to catch her.

  The scroll had been personally written by Imhotep, I had never actually read it, it was full of some kind of dense mathematics. Now it would serve a useful purpose.

  I watched as Ammit walked ahead of me, she would snuffle madly at the floor or a corner of a bookshelf, then she would stop and appear to be deep in thought as if she was doing some sort of complex calculation. Then she would walk confidently in one direction for fifteen or so feet, then the snuffling would begin again.

  I started to wonder if her search was as much intellectual as it was physical.

  She found the book shelf with Imhotep's paper's in twenty minutes.

  The library in the City of Magic had been created by a simple magical scroll, on it I had written a small treatise about a subject so interesting that no scholar could resist it. I had left the scroll at a small papyrus shop to be purchased by my first unknowing victim. He had deposited into his personal library.

  The scroll would activate a spell which copied all the written material in its proximity then ship it to the city of Magic's library, which then did a crude job of cataloguing it, then the scroll would transport itself again to a random shop or market to be picked up again by some other curious stranger.

  I had intended the scroll to be active just over my lifetime but because of unforeseen circumstances it had run for six thousand years.

  The library had become impossibly huge, from the small amount of cataloguing we had been able to do with a search spell, it appeared to have virtually every book, scroll and clay tablet that had ever been written.

  Imhotep had acquired a medium sized bookshelf's worth of papyrus scrolls when the spell had copied it. The shelves were of the traditional diamond shaped variety used to house scroll's in antiquity, about ten feet wide and seven feet high.

  I immediately noticed a roll of papyrus that looked like Imhotep had clumsily tried to hide it beneath the other scrolls. I carefully removed it and unrolled a section.

  I heard Ammit bark as she saw my expression change.

  I held up the unrolled section of papyrus showing her the contents, they were pictures of scantily clad young women in various unnatural poses, the artist had been quite skillful.

  Ammit and I exchanged a knowing look.

  "Men are so silly," I said as I replaced the papyrus.

  I carefully searched through the piles of scrolls looking for something of interest. I had to keep a wary eye on Ammit, she was trying to act nonchalant but I knew the instant I found something of interest she would snatch it from my hand and run away with it.

  I finally found what I was looking for, rather than picking it up I reached into my hand bag and pulled out a white plastic bone shaped toy.

  I squeezed it and heard a loud squeaking sound.

  Ammit's favorite toy.

  I threw it about twenty feet away amidst the libraries shelves.

  Ammit started to run after it then stopped, she looked at me, I could almost read her thoughts.

  "Trying to trick me huh..."

  "Squeak squeak," I said imitating the toys sound.

  The thought of her favorite toy sitting by itself became unbearable and she took off running. I grabbed the scrolls I wanted and jammed them into my handbag.

  Ammit was back mere seconds later, she dropped the toy at my feet wagging her tail.

  I picked it up and then put it back into my handbag, I wiped my hand on my dress to get rid of the drool.

  "Time to go Ammit, " I said as I stepped away from her.

  I had brought my magic bracelet and was preparing to use it to transport myself away.

  Ammit walked up next to me.

  "No... stay back," I said as I walked backwards.

  I wanted to make sure she wasn't in the spells area of effect.

  Ammit had a stubborn expression on her face now, she walked next to me again.

  "Geez... stay away you dumb mutt," I grabbed the squeaky toy and tossed it behind a shelf, Ammit ran after it. I quickly flicked the squares on my bracelet activating my transport spell.

  I was back in my quarters in the City of Magic.

  "Woof!"

  I almost jumpe
d out of my skin, I turned around and saw Ammit, she had even managed to bring her squeaky toy.

  I put down a bowl of water for Ammit, she started lapping it immediately, when she was satisfied she curled up onto the rug with her squeaky toy.

  I dumped all the scrolls I had brought onto my large desk and started sorting through them.

  "Squeak squeak."

  I turned and looked at Ammit, she pretended not to notice me staring at her as she gnawed away at her toy bone.

  I turned back to the scrolls unrolling one I thought looked interesting. I had retrieved what I had thought were Imhotep's daily journals when he was training as a sorcerer. It looked as if I had guessed right, I started reading a random page.

  "Such a vision of beauty she was, and so intelligent with a delightful sense of humor."

  This went on for many paragraphs, it was actually starting to make me feel a little nauseous. I scanned through the other scrolls it appeared that half of the content in them was fawning descriptions of this woman. He finally inserted her name, Semiramis.

  The rest of the scrolls dealt with more mundane things, his other friends, classes he liked of hated or spell's he was working on.

  Then the tone suddenly changed, it appeared the woman had taken a lover. The writing turned into the morose adolescent whining of someone feeling sorry for themselves.

  Gods... I remembered my first love, he didn't even know that I was alive... thankfully. He had been a few years older than I. When I had grown older I realized how stupid I had been, whatever I had seen in him had become a deep mystery to me.

  I suddenly realized the room had gone silent, I turned around quickly to my right holding down the pile of scrolls with my hands. I saw the toy bone sitting on the floor by itself.

  I felt something brush against the left side my body. I turned my gaze just in time to see a black blur grab one of the scrolls in her mouth.

  "Stop!" I yelled.

  I watched Ammit gleefully bounding away the papyrus scroll trailing from her mouth.

  "God damn it Ammit!"

  I carefully put away the rest of the scrolls in a sturdy desk drawer. I had learned from past experience when dealing with her to close the barn door after the horses had run out.

  I felt my magic bracelet as I quietly crept towards the door of the next room. I had no patience for this Ammit would feel the full wraith of my magic.