Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  “Let me know if there is pain...” The priest suggested, working steadily with his splayed fingers; rhythmically kneading and pulling the sojourner’s already relaxed muscles

  As he worked, almost sorrowful thoughts filtered through his hands into Marai’s relaxing neck and back.

  I will accomplish the truth. he repeated three times, internally. I will find the demon of deceit that lies here.

  “Is it the truth you truly seek? Same as I?” Marai asked.

  The priest’s hands stopped. A feeling of violation dotted the air around the inspector’s aura before he chose to ignore the sojourner and continue the lesson in quiet, guarded whispers. He gently related how pressure was used to waken, deaden, or work healings as he touched each area.

  “You’re here to accomplish the truth, aren’t you?” Marai tried again in a few minutes.

  The hands, now working his lower back, stopped again and trembled slightly.

  Marai sensed that the man was looking around to see if they were being watched. He wanted to speak unobserved.

  “It is so.” He breathed out in a barely audible whisper. “Take care...of pulling thoughts from me...I can feel you doing it...I can kill you, if I must.”

  Marai switched his head to the other cheek and stared coldly up at the priest.

  The priest’s brow was beaded with more sweat than could be gained by his working in a warm, damp room. The silent raging of some desperate inner conflict was about to drive the inspector to distraction.

  “Maybe you could kill me and maybe not” Marai replied, adding...“But you don’t really want to.” he laughed a little, puzzled by his own sense of calm. He knew the priest wouldn’t be able to hurt him even if he decided to try. There would be no “accidental drowning” in the bath tonight.

  “Is it my asking about your search here?” Marai tried “Is that what troubles you? I already know you are of royal blood now, just as your master is, yet he doesn’t trust you. Know that it shows even to one as untrained as I. He asks you constantly to prove yourself to him. He demands your trust, where he has never has given you his own trust, because something about you scares him, doesn’t it?”

  The priest moved his fingers to Marai’s neck, positioning them icily over the nerve centers as a warning. Now he was serious.

  “A blow at the base of my head, or the right pressure where it meets my neck ought to do it...” Marai felt his heartbeat speed in the instinctive animal terror that the priest just might try to end him in a moment. He felt the air around the priest’s hands quicken at the same time. He knew the younger priest had been given permission to use that option.

  “But,” Marai continued “If you kill me, you’ll have to accept the things your teacher wet nurses you for the rest of your days beneath him. You will wear the collar of a slave under your royal pectoral. I already sense of you that you are not a man who blindly accepts whatever the gods and prophets dictate. You never have been that man.”

  The slender hands withdrew.

  Sensing the immediate threat had passed, Marai took the edge of the towel and turned with it to cover himself as he lay on his back.

  The priest averted his eyes in a kind of defeated pain.

  “Well done…” he sighed “Our lesson is over for the evening, however.” The priest stood brusquely, smoothing his bath house shenti which seemed to be little more than a short apron over his genitals, then withdrew into himself.

  Marai gazed up from his place on the floor in quiet contemplation.

  “But which of us learned more?” Marai sighed, eager to go to sleep, now that he had fully relaxed. He knew the morning would come far too early to suit him, if he slept at all.

  “Again, don’t try to read me.” the priest averted his eyes, as if eye-contact with his charge provided too much of a link to his soul. “Allow me the dignity of volunteering truths about myself when I am ready to do so.” He bent to help his charge stand.

  Marai felt truly relaxed and really too groggy to pay close attention to anything else that was being said. He folded the length of white linen given him into a loincloth. In a moment, the priest led him to a small guest room with a high window that looked out onto a different airy plaza. In the center of the room was a narrow frame bed, a mat and cushions spread out over rushes that covered the floor. When Marai settled, the priest silently bowed and took his leave of him. Sagging thankfully to the goose down pillows, the big man mused over the events of the day.

  The elder priest was every bit as devious as he had anticipated, but brilliant. He was truly the greatest of minds in Kemet, even at his age. Marai knew it was a rare honor to study in his presence. Was that what the Children of Stone meant all along? Was the elder priest truly the man who would ‘Unlock” him?

  This “Inspector” was different. Though he displayed marble-like discipline and control, he had been constantly reaching out to the sojourner, even the moment they met in the Poors market. It seemed to be telling Marai he needed to be rescued. He knew could save him from some future dread that waited for him. He feared admitting the truth for his very life.

  What truth is that? Marai asked himself and almost immediately felt the answer within.

  Inspector Wserkaf, not the elder, was the predicted heir of Djedi. Now as then, two men counseled the sojourner. Djedi and this Prince Hordjedtef as a young man would have counseled him if he had not been delayed fifty years. The Great One had betrayed the discipline he was taught by deceiving Marai. He had disguised himself as his elder and had tried to dissuade the big man from coming to Ineb Hedj at all. What puzzled Marai was the idea of how the elder thought he would have ever received the Children of Stone, if no one brought them to him. Perhaps Hordjedtef thought the Children might relent and, recognizing his skill, show him how to find them himself.

  Marai’s eyes widened in amazement. He remembered his vision of a royal militia coming to rout the band of N’ahab-Atall’s men and finding an abandoned camp. Charred skulls had been in the dirt near his cave. Seeing the scene again more clearly, he saw a prince seated in his ebony and gold chased sedan chair, in rather light body armor, leading the detachment. He wasn’t beefy or powerful looking. He was wiry and when he stood to shoot, he was deadly with a bow. He had marching and ground fighting seconds...warriors who would protect and take on anything more serious than could be solved by a skilled shot.

  Now Marai recognized the short-cropped black hair, the mid-dark skin and the piercing birdlike eyes. He sighed, dismayed, as he saw the young prince hopping down from his chair to lift the first skull from the ashes. The young prince’s expression was one of wonder, dissappointment and growing, simmering rage that he wasn’t going to be able to find the Children of Stone after his careful meditations and calculations of the stars had given him the exact location where their crystalline ship had fallen.

  At that very moment, the Children of Stone and Marai and three once hideous camp she-beasts lay sleeping, hidden in a nameless dune ten leagues from the abandoned Wadi Ahu.

  Now, fifty-five years later, Djedi was long dead and Hordjedtef was the old man he had pretended to be long ago. He was the wisest of the wise, with a bright and promising protege at his side.

  Marai understood more of the nature of the elder’s frustration now, but didn’t want the old man’s misery in his dreams a moment longer. Sending wonderful dreams of peace to his wives, he let the whispers of the Children guide his dreamless sleep. For a moment he thought of himself years before, struggling across the sand in search of his goddess. Once again, he heard the voices in the crystal vessel lulling:

  Come and see

  Man of Ai

  There is something here...

  that never was here before...

  Prince Hordjedtef tore through a variety of subjects as eagerly as he attacked his meal of herbal teas, broths, fruit and sweetened breads the following mid-morning. Over the several days of instruction that followed, he never dwelled on any subject at length, condensing years of stu
dy into a few days. To watch him choose his rapid-fire instructions and quizzes was almost tiring even for sojourner, the scribes on duty, and any servants in the old man’s employ.

  You have the sacred knowledge already coded in your heart. I am merely speaking the words of power that enable these truths to be unlocked in you. Divine wisdom permits me to speak at a rate your elevated soul can best tolerate. It does speak to your gifted nature, dear sojourning one... Others might perish early in their struggle to understand all of the concepts I impart. Confronted by what we do, their thoughts would grow hopelessly confused.

  That was the way he explained his method.

  Marai wondered if the old man had some secret power of his own that was helping him keep up at this blinding pace. The “teaching” itself probably wasn’t even necessary. Soon, the dialogs between teacher and student became more of a “What do you know” or “What Think You” exchange.

  Whenever the high priest would begin a new topic, Marai would grow silent, contemplate the subject for a few moments, and then begin to discuss it as intelligently with him as if he had studied the concept for years.

  The theory of the soul, for instance, which might take a decade to accurately understand, was studied only in the context of how the spirit longs to return to its native star world, rather than the layers of soul, spirit and body or the concept of return to earthly realms.

  The wise initiate, Marai was told, learned over the planned series of three to seven initiations, divided by various degrees, how to gather that spirit with the will, take it out of its’ mortal flesh, and go walking among the stars. The kings and priests, having become “star walkers” as he called them, would become one with the face of the creator, and all of the gods and goddesses of certain sacred duties and ways, or at least one’s brighter image, dwelling in these outer realms.

  At each level, there would be a trial to determine readiness to advance to the next illumination. There would be speeches and chanted discourses to be committed to memory. Error meant failure. On return to the walking-in-skin world, it was an enlightened one’s sacred duty to record and interpret the things he or she had experienced while they had journeyed.

  Each day of study consisted of a morning bath and application of oils. The old man had graciously dispatched some servants to assist his student with this and to provide him with clean clothing each day. Usually the two men were alone in the sunny front plaza. The exception was the sesh, or scribe, hired to write down anything unusual the sojourner might say or do, on signal from the elder prince. On occasion, however, there were brief visits of messengers from the king or a visit from another priestly colleague who had come to gawk at the strange new student.

  Throughout the day, there were comings and goings of servants tidying up, an occasional jest or two, or a break to play “fetch the stick” with the hounds out in the orchard while the old man conducted more serious discussions with some of the visiting dignitaries. Marai was kept out of the view of these guests. The elder teacher declined dinner invitations with the other officials, feigning fatigue over a current project. He always dispatched his wives to go in his stead.

  Marai was certain the old man was being worn half to death with these teaching efforts at first, but as the days went on Hordjedtef seemed to grow stronger. Marai’s stay grew almost pleasant. There were, in addition to the two hounds, cats roaming or chasing, monkeys chattering and playing, birds lighting on the awning, the old man’s wives and their maids taking in some sun or stringing beads for jewelry and grinding cosmetics. In some ways, the old man seemed to be softening around him and even growing affectionate, but Marai still didn’t trust him. Some undefinable distance still existed between the two men. Marai knew he needed to keep himself no less guarded than he had been in the first days.

  Each morning, as he bathed, he sent a thought to Naibe-Ellit and the others stating he missed them terribly, but that all was still going well. Soon enough, he would be sent home to wait. If he didn’t come home, someone would come for them and and bring them across the river. At that point, one of the royal wives who had served as prophetess would begin to instruct them. He hoped it would be in a low season so Etum Addi’s business wouldn’t suffer too greatly.

  Naibe related back to him through her own thoughts. The family in the new apartment below them seemed to have spread out all over town. The woman and baby were below as were the other children, but the man continued to work across the river, even after they buried the old woman. His wife didn’t want to live across the river in the workers village. Now it wasn’t her sleep... it was the baby’s sleep that was challenged by the noise. The poor young man agreed for her to stay and visited them whenever he could. This would be on days off, when various gods were celebrated and work was slowed out of respect for them.

  The day would then move to the mid-morning meal. Marai met the elder wife, Saetefptah, who was the third titled Countess as the other two had died long before she had come into Hordjedtef’s household. She was the old man’s younger cousin and she had once been a minor prophetess of Seshat. She and the other wife Tena-Ankh, a musician, looked like round little painted quail hens. They both seemed more interested in gossip about some new wig seen in the market than in esoteric mysteries. The elder woman chatted in quite refined tones of grandchildren, even great-grandchildren, a thing that saddened the younger wife.

  The sojourner learned she had no living child and none of those she had birthed had even lived to an age to give her a grandchild. There were always situations with serving girls, a coming festival, and the inevitable whisper about some ache or pain. They were like elder women everywhere. Acting as if Marai was invisible most of the time, the only conversation they ever addressed directly to him was about that delightful fold of honeyed dates that the young Ta-Seti sesh had brought by some time before.

  On the surface, Hordjedtef’s women appeared to live in a different world than he did, but Marai knew the elder countess was filled with deceptive secrets even though she always acted sweet, polite and somewhat ignorant. She was a gracious hostess and she had been an excellent dancer until her retirement. Her greater skill was in the hiding of any depth of character, much in the same way Ariennu could hide her inner strength. The musician was melancholy and as out of place in a royal house as Deka was in the Kina-Ahna market.

  Seeing the women going about their daily tasks only increased the former shepherd’s pain at being away from his beloved ones. He missed the surreal, calm days at the market, Naibe’s endless passion and Ariennu’s naughty playfulness. He longed to comfort Deka; to help the wounds in her heart just by talking, hugging and listening to her magical songs. She had blossomed into his warmth so well before that last day. Marai thought of the way she would drop her nose to his massive chest and nuzzle in the small amount of silver and gold hair growing there, even if she did accidentally call him Ta-Te once or insist on entitling him Man-Sun.

  After his evening meal with the elder and some quiet contemplation, Marai would bathe again and drift in a spiritual rush to be with the women he loved Every night he reassured them, once again, that it wouldn’t be long before he held them in real arms instead of ghostly ones.

  As the dialogs continued, Marai realized he was countering even more brilliantly but never becoming rude. He wasn’t even relying on the Children of Stone in many cases. He had simply learned to outwit and outpace his teacher.

  Marai mentioned to Hordjedtef one day that he had been able to at least “spirit walk” as soon as the “Ta-Ntr” had gifted him. The sojourner told his teacher that he remembered him much younger and that he was with a jolly fat man, of ancient years on one such journey. For some reason, the elder paused as if the blood in his veins had become metal but then, making little acknowledgement of what the sojourner had said, replied:

  “Have you been out among the stars with the gods?” The elder ignored him, then inquired in a somewhat mocking tone, as if he didn’t really believe his guest. Marai stated very polit
ely that he had not, then watched the old man nod as if he remembered something, but didn’t want to talk about it.

  A theme in the teaching began to emerge. When Marai had been on the Children of Stone’s vessel, he had been introduced to it in the form of an edict. It had issued from the old man’s lips when he posed as Djedi. Now it repeated itself again. The phrases came as such unquestioned dogma that the sojourner was certain Hordjedtef didn’t even understand the meaning of his own words on the subject any more.

  Perhaps some time ago, when he wrote the now famous verses for his son Prince Auibre on how one ought to live and more importantly die, he may have lived his own advice. His son had died young and without issue. His daughters married and bore sons of whom he never spoke, but it was not the same to him. Marai sensed young Auibre’s death was, for the old man, another betrayal by his gods and a thing which allowed him to take another step away from his own faith. Marai remembered how hopeless Ilara’s death left him...how he threw himself into worship when he could have just as easily become hard and corrupt.

  I know how grief can change you. he tried.

  Hordjedtef had stared when he received that thought, but appeared to not understand.

  Cleanse yourself before your own eyes,

  lest another cleanse you.

  The voices whispered, once in their own gentle voices and once in Hordjedtef’s elegant voice as a young prince. That meant, if you find something that keeps you from perfection, fix it yourself, before someone else discovers it and whispers to others of your failure.

  Judge not lest ye be judged

  Marai sensed that his teacher’s writings would go on in some form forever, re-titled and re-copied by later philosophers and holy men, long after Hordjedtef was in the West, his remains lying in the “good dwelling” he had built for himself. He wanted to tell the old man how it would be, but he doubted the priest would hear his words.