Wardens of Eternity

by Courtney Allison Moulton

“All clear,” he called up to us coolly.

  We followed and reassembled below to find ourselves in a chamber larger and wider than the tunnel above.

  I turned around and strengthened my tahen spell. Netherlight glittered on an enormous rose granite sarcophagus. Hieroglyphs and ritual imagery were carved into every inch of the stone, save for the exquisite face carved on the lid. The figure’s carefully drawn eyes were open, serenely gazing toward the heavens, her lips full and calm.

  “We’ve found her,” Nasira said, her voice hushed with disbelief.

  Gilded chests were arranged neatly; we lifted lids to find garments, ornate ceremonial wigs, cosmetics jars and applicators, and an immense fortune of jewelry. Everything the queen would need to look her best when she awakened. Against the far wall was a more sinister sight: desiccated corpses slumped beside one another, their bodies anything but properly mummified. It appeared as if they’d died then and there thousands of years ago. I recalled what Sayer had told me of the rumors regarding Nefertari’s true tomb—that those servants who sealed her sarcophagus from within also sealed themselves in, protecting the secret of the location for all time. I hoped they hadn’t suffered long. The sight itself was disturbing, but I was more unsettled by the fact this had happened at all. I supposed the world was different then, even for a queen who’d been heralded as a great ruler. Still, it was disquieting.

  “Let’s lift this,” Cyrene said, instructing us all to stand on each side of the coffin.

  Our collective and careful taw spell raised the incredible load and set the lid on the ground. The inner coffin was crafted of wood, painted with melted gold, and covered with funerary scenes. Nefertari’s cartouche was inscribed between her likeness’s crossed arms and the beautiful, winged image of the horned goddess of love, Hathor. We lifted the second lid and set it beside the first. Contained within the inner coffin was the fourth and final canopic jar—and a mummy wrapped in creamy-white, aged linen strips, her face concealed within a solid gold death mask carved delicately into her likeness. She wore the gold vulture crown of Tefnut over a wig of dark henna-dyed hair carefully curled and threaded with pearls and other gemstones.

  Cyrene reunited the last canopic jar with the other three inside the coffin beside the mummy. She cautiously lifted the wig first, then the death mask. She drew her dagger as we waited in breathless silence and cut through the linen covering the mummy’s entire head. To my astonishment, Nefertari had been remarkably preserved, despite her skin having dried and darkened with age. She wore a peaceful expression in death, her cheekbones pronounced and lips closed, though they’d thinned. Her thick hair remained wrapped and pinned to her scalp, and I imagined the tresses were still quite long.

  “The heart, Ziva,” Cyrene said, and I blinked to attention and handed the giant ruby to our priestess. She placed it on Nefertari’s chest and the stone flashed, flashed, and dimmed, flashed, flashed, and dimmed just as a heart would beat.

  Cyrene raised her palms skyward and magic pounded the air around her. “Osiris!” she bellowed. “King of the netherworld and of the righteous dead! Banisher of the evil to oblivion! He who was murdered by Chaos and resurrected! I invoke you!”

  Light grew from the queen’s heart, pulsing, surging, flooding the chamber with red. Braziers in the four corners of the room burst brightly with netherlight. Magic swallowed us all.

  “I invoke thee, Osiris!” Cyrene continued. “I invoke the messengers of any god! I invoke all the gods! Hail to you, the wardens of eternity, founders of the everlasting! Queen Nefertari is the possessor of the pure heart. She is the pure lotus who awakens from the long night and comes forth by day. I have collected the magic from every place it was hidden and brought it here. I have the queen’s heart and through it, Nefertari’s soul will find her mortal body, return to life, and become immortal. Her heart is hers alone and obeys no other. Her mouth is hers, so she may speak. Her legs are hers to walk. Her arms are hers to raise and destroy her enemies. Nefertari is aware in her heart! She speaks with her mouth! She walks with her legs! She raises her arms to destroy her enemies! Let the sky open its doors to the domain of eternity. Allow her soul to come forth through the stargate, return to her body, and arise a living goddess. Arise, Nefertari, Favored of the Sun! Arise! Arise! Arise!”

  The mummy’s eyes opened, a brilliant, sparkling green. The magic flowing through her and spilling over the walls of the granite sarcophagus was intoxicating. It seeped through my skin and soaked my muscles and bones. Nefertari sat forward, her dry skin scraping and scratching. She raised her hands and began to claw at her linen wrappings. She lifted the ruby heart in her palm, but it had grown dark and lost its glimmer. She dropped it beside her as if it were a spare brick. She turned to look at us, that orphic green glowing in our netherlight.

  She opened her mouth, licked her lips, and tried to speak. “Medjai,” she rasped, the word barely audible, and she touched her cracked fingertips to her desiccated throat. Her bare feet touched the ground and she settled onto them shakily. She was quite petite with small shoulders, standing a good half a foot shorter than me, but her hips were shapely and womanly. She raised her hands to unbind her hair and those long, walnut-brown tresses tumbled over her shoulders.

  Everyone around me settled to the floor to bow, kneeling with their heads lowered, some with their palms flat out on the ground. I followed suit, hoping not to make a mistake in front of our queen.

  Nefertari asked something in Ancient Egyptian, her voice rough and weak. We rose once she addressed us and I stood with them.

  Cyrene replied in English, “More than three thousand years, my queen. I am high priestess of the Medjai.”

  Nefertari paused, surprise lighting her face for a moment, before she nodded with acceptance. Her gaze surveyed us with interest; I imagined our clothing was nothing like she’d ever seen before. When she noticed me, she came forward, eyes fixed on my face. “This is the scion,” she said, miraculously in English as well, her tone assured as though she already knew the answer to her question, could sense it.

  “Yes, my queen,” the priestess said.

  “Do you know the transference spell?” Nefertari asked.

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “Then proceed.”

  Cyrene turned and raised a hand. Magic shot toward me, clamped my arms to my sides. I tried to wrestle free of her grip, stricken speechless with confusion.

  “What are you doing?” My heart began to pound and the air around me seemed to condense and grow so heavy I could barely breathe. People around me stared in shock, mouths open. I looked up to the priestess, who wore no expression at all.

  “Cyrene!” I yelled at her. She ignored me. “Cyrene!” Somehow I pushed forward, taking a step and she looked at me with surprise. Then an invisible force collided with me, shoving me backward, my boots squeaking on the stone floor. Nefertari’s hard green glare pinned on me, her magic tightening on my body like a fist.

  “What is happening?” Sayer demanded. “What are you doing?”

  When he started toward me, Cyrene cast out her hand, her power picking him up and slamming his back into the wall, suspending him in the air. His face was wild with panic. “No! No! Ziva!”

  Nefertari’s mummy stepped shakily toward me, her mummified face pinched with curiosity. “Why must you be restrained? Are you not honored by your sacrifice?”

  At that last word, Nasira tore her asaya free and shot toward Nefertari, but Cyrene met her with one stride. Her own weapon cracked against Nasira’s. Cyrene’s asaya swept high, slashing Nasira across the chest. My friend wailed with pain and her legs buckled, but before her knees could hit the ground, Cyrene’s magic cast her body across the room.

  “Nasi!” I yelled but did not see her stir.

  Tariq stepped forward, and in a low, shaking voice he said, “What is this, Cyrene? You attack my children.” He drew an asaya. Other Medjai pulled their own weapons, but some moved to stand beside Cyrene and not against her. The room was carve
d in two as though by a blade.

  The high priestess summoned her power and it manifested as a shining light, spiraling up her legs and down her arms to pour into her open hands. “Our queen’s resurrection must be complete. Her soul was returned to her body, but her life’s vitality was reborn within Ziva. It rightfully belongs to Nefertari. Our queen must be restored.”

  The sinister truth in her words resonated quickly. “That’s a very fancy way of saying you mean to kill me,” I accused her.

  Cyrene looked at me, void of empathy. “I would gladly take your place. But unfortunately for us both, that cannot be done.”

  “You had this planned the entire time,” I replied, pressing against my magical bonds for freedom.

  “You are Medjai, Ziva, but you’re not truly one of us,” she told me. “We understand the life of our queen matters more than any and all of ours.”

  Her power encircled me and pulled me toward her. My limbs were frozen in place and I could barely move. My growled taw spell slammed into Cyrene and broke her concentration for an instant.

  Sayer clawed free of the magic restraining him and charged toward me, only to be hit with the powerful sena spell Cyrene threw in front of him. His wild eyes darted all over the shining shield before he started trying to break through it. His taw spell struck hard, and magic sparked. As he cast over and over, I could feel every gust and blast, but the high priestess’s spell was too strong.

  With a roar, he tore back his fist and punched as hard as he could. He beat at it, his voice rage-strangled deep in his throat. The magic cracked, the splinters of light blinding and electric. He shoved his shoulder into the barrier, pushed and pushed. Blood streaked his arms, flashes of red in the searing brightness.

  He was killing himself. Tears scalded my eyes.

  “Stop,” I begged him, as he tried to get to me. “Stop, Sayer, please.”

  Cyrene withdrew the magical wall only to throw another spell into his body and dash him away from me. He hit the ground rolling and her magic snatched him up into the air and bound him with the same spell restraining me. I turned back to Cyrene who marched toward me once more.

  Sayer’s screams of fury filled my ears. “Ziva! No! No!” He screamed and screamed, the sound of his anguish tearing my skull and heart in half—then he went silent. My head snapped in his direction. His body had gone rigid as stone. I could see the tendrils of fire-crackling magic coiled around his throat, cutting off his air.

  “Stop it!” I screamed at her. “Don’t hurt him!”

  “Ziva, I don’t want to,” Cyrene said to me as she drew me close.

  Rage curdled inside me. I spat at her. Spittle flecked her cheek and she raised a hand to wipe it away with a grimace. My teeth gnashed at her; I must’ve looked like a wild animal.

  Set had been right. His words echoed in my mind, each syllable a slap to my face: “If you knew anything at all, you’d beg me for sanctuary.”

  “You disgust me,” I hissed at the woman I had so admired.

  Whatever calm Tariq had grasped onto had slipped from his fingers. “These are my children, Cyrene!” He launched at her, but two of the Medjai who’d stood with her grasped both his arms, wrestled him to his knees, and poised their blades at his throat. “My wife died for this!”

  The pressure of Nefertari’s magic descended on me, a cold, electric prickle. The queen was supposed to have arisen as a living god, and that meant her power had to rival Set’s and Anubis’s. How could I possibly escape from this with my life?

  “We were given magic to protect and serve Egypt at any cost,” Cyrene said, addressing us all. “Our lives have never been our own.”

  “My parents knew what you had planned for me,” I growled at her. “They fled to America to protect me, because I was more important to them than some dead queen who should’ve stayed dead.”

  Nefertari turned toward me, and I couldn’t imagine how I’d found any beauty in her grey, dead face. Her lips twisted into a snarl and those eyes—that electric green—flared with the color the sky turns during the worst and deadliest of storms.

  A shadow passed over Cyrene’s face and anger quivered in her frown. “Your parents became traitors that day. My mission was to retrieve you, but I found your father first in New York seventeen years ago.”

  “You murdered him,” I growled venomously. “Did you murder my mother too?”

  “I found her nearly a year later in France,” Cyrene corrected. “She’d left you in New York and fled alone, leaving far larger tracks than you ever had. I suspect she intended to lure me away from you. You’d disappeared, nameless, among countless New York orphans. She never gave you up during my interrogation. She died to protect you. I took no joy in ending her life.”

  Heat, horror, and understanding hit me like the blast from an oven. Desperation to tear this creature limb from limb ran through my veins like fire. “You stole my parents’ lives! You stole my life! I will end you for what you’ve done!”

  Cyrene’s teeth snapped together and the muscle in her jaw rippled. “Ziva, they ran from their destiny—your destiny. None of this is about us. Our duty is to protect this world and our queen. I did my duty—just as I must do again.”

  Cyrene faced Nefertari, raised her hands, and bellowed: “I know all your names and I praise you, the wardens of eternity! The magic is mine and the power is hers, Queen Nefertari. Her soul has returned on the great wind of the sky. She will be vindicated against her enemies! She will strike them down with stone and blade and magic! From her womb, she was made immortal. Her daughters and their daughters and their daughters have lived on her heart’s blood and here she will reclaim it! This life is hers! This vitality is hers! Her daughter yields her life! Nefertari will be whole!”

  “Ziva, don’t stop fighting,” Tariq begged me. I looked at him, into the ardent tears in his eyes. “Don’t let them do this.”

  The queen flicked her wrist and Tariq’s neck cracked. His head lopped to the side and his body went starkly limp. Those who held him let him drop.

  A scream of horror tore from my throat.

  Nefertari moved toward me, her arms outstretched. The ancient linen covering her body was so very, very dry.

  I opened my hand wide and said, “Khet.” Magical flame erupted, catching the crispy, papery linen. The queen gasped with surprise and her wail filled the chamber. The magic binding me fell like ashes at my feet. I bolted for the entrance toward freedom.

  My body slammed to a halt and my internal organs crushed together against my diaphragm. Nausea flooded me. I yelped as I was hauled upward through the air. My spine cracked into the ceiling. The floor was too far below me. The air expelled from me as magic dragged me across jagged stone. The world whirred past my vision. My body was yanked again, down at an angle, and I hit the wall before the magic released me. I crumpled to the ground and lifted my head.

  Nefertari stood above me, her bejeweled, skeletal body engulfed in red flame and black smoke, her eyes shining green. She was a vision ripped from a nightmare I’d never had the imagination to conjure.

  “I will claim what is mine and the gods will tremble before me!” the queen roared. “My shadow will spread across the sands of Egypt and beyond the currents of the seas, the infinite imperishable stars—all that creation has touched belongs to me!”

  Those eyes shot wide and bulged. Her mouth dropped open and she tried to lift her arms, but they seemed glued to her sides. I recognized this spell. Sekhem. But it wasn’t mine.

  Sayer held one hand high, fist clenched. Magic surged from him, wave after wave crashing into the floor. The tomb’s ceiling shook, the walls rumbled.

  He was trying to bring it down on the queen.

  His eyes met mine. “Go, Ziva. Run!”

  I shook my head. “Not without you.”

  A scream freed itself from Nefertari’s throat and she broke free of Sayer’s magic. She turned on him. Netherlight and shadows erupted in the space around her, and in an instant, she was in front of hi
m. Had him by the throat. Closed her fist. And she let him fall, his body loose and limp. A broken toy at her feet.

  Satisfaction filled her gaunt face.

  Not without him. Not without him. I couldn’t go.

  He was dead. Sayer died for me. Tariq died for me. My parents died for me. Nasira had likely suffered the same fate.

  They were dead so I would live.

  So I would live.

  I shot to my feet and wasted no time in darting toward the exit once more. Chaos had erupted behind me; roars of anger and confusion rose to the heavens, but I didn’t look back.

  With a small tahen spell lighting my way, I ran. At last I reached the rock wall we’d climbed down and I quickly strapped myself into my equipment. Alone, the ascent was dangerous and difficult. Every muscle in my body screamed at me and I ignored them all.

  “I’m strong now,” I told myself, my voice strained. “My body is no longer starved and weak. I made myself strong. I can do this.”

  I reached the top, and as I hauled myself up over the edge, the pain of the effort tore a cry from my throat. Safely on firm ground, I allowed myself a moment’s rest. My chest heaved, desperate for breath and relief. I stood, my muscles screaming at me, and I discarded my climbing harness and rope. I paused and looked behind me. Anger flushed through my cheeks. I knelt at the edge of the drop-off, removed my was dagger, and I cut that rope.

  CHAPTER

  24

  At the mouth of the tunnel, I found Baket pacing impatiently and I almost sobbed with joy. Her expression twisted with concern at my disheveled and panicked condition.

  “Baket!” I cried and ran to her. I threw my arms around her neck and hugged her tight. “You’re okay! Where is Anubis?”

  Uncertainty filled her eyes and my stomach plummeted. “He and Kauket have gone and . . . others have come.”

  I stared at her, baffled, too exhausted. “Others?”

  “Humans,” the sphinx said.

  She led me to the edge of the dais where I could see the assembling of military vehicles and dozens of soldiers—each wearing a red Nazi sash on their arms.