Isis Wept

by Stephan Loy

  “I can’t allow that,” Isis murmured. “I can’t put my order in danger.”

  Nephthys frowned. “Sister, you have two choices. You can stay under Set and endure eternal rape. The land will die and become like Abu Simbel or far, far worse. Your priestesses will also die, as will every man, woman, child and animal within the borders of Abydos. And before your priestesses die, they may suffer fates much like yours. I hear among the Setim that Set has promised your order to the rape camps; he just has to give the command. That’s one choice, the least palatable of choices. Or, you could leave this place and be free of my husband’s attentions. As you recover, so will the land. As you warm to your quest, the land will prosper. Those who help you escape will suffer, but no worse than they otherwise would. Yet they may be luckier, if Ma’at is with us. And their aid, whatever its outcome, will be remembered and rewarded by Ma’at.”

  Isis stared at nothing.

  Merferet squared her shoulders at her goddess. “We won’t allow you to lose this chance,” she said. “All of us love you. We cannot -- will not -- cower on the roof while that monster defiles you most of the day. We’ve lived as cowards long enough. We’re willing to die for you.”

  Isis moaned at the choices they presented. She clutched her stomach and rocked on her stool. “And, what of you, Nephthys? His fury will seek you most of all. Are you prepared to take my place in Set’s sadistic affections?”

  “I am not the goddess of life,” Nephthys said primly. “He won’t be compelled to have me, and I’m more disposed to hurt him if he tries. Set knows this. We have ... an understanding.”

  “Forgive me, sister, but your husband is as forgiving as a crocodile. ‘Understandings’ won’t protect you.”

  “That isn’t your worry. It’s a choice I make. I can take care of myself where Set is concerned. I’ve done it for longer than I care to recall.”

  “Why do you do this?” Isis cried. “What have I done to deserve such devotion?”

  “You are who you are,” Merferet offered.

  Nephthys put forth a more personal response. “I owe you,” she breathed. “I’ve betrayed you, and I hope to atone. I look at you now after half a year’s suffering, and what I see is a mirror of myself. I won’t let you become like me. At least for you, there is still escape.”

  Isis was trapped. They had made her decision for her.

  Chapter Five:

  Qebera stooped amid corpses, nervously fingering the pommel of his sword. The weapon comforted him, reminding him that somewhere order and sense lived in the world. At least thirty bodies littered the rocky ground around him, thirty dead humans in frozen attitudes of combat. Less than half wore the red linen uniform of the hated Setim. The others were clothed in simple workmen's loincloths, or low-grade merchant kilts. Some lay entangled, hands clasping flint weapons or encircling necks they had meant to strangle. Some lay crumpled where they had turned to flee. All were ripped open, their still steaming organs exposed to the elements, and to vultures.

  "What is it?" the Bedouin beside him whispered. "What happened here? Can you say?"

  Qebera turned to Abadi Saliim. The man crouched, his bow nocked, peering from boulder to boulder throughout the rocky wadii. His eyes strained wide beneath the hood of his cloak, his mouth a hard line. "Setim and rebels," Qebera explained, keeping his tone low so as not to carry. "The rebels arranged an ambush. They fought. Then, there was something else..."

  "That something else hasn't been long in leaving. Those bodies are fresh, minutes dead."

  "Yes." Qebera looked around to the other men. They had dispersed throughout the scene of death, bows drawn or flint knives held ready. They separated for greater security, to see more as a group and make ambush more difficult. But spreading out also made detection more likely. "I think we should get out of here."

  "You don't have to say so twice." Abadi signaled to his men, who started backing toward the camels far to their rear. "What did this?" he asked. "If you know, so should I. It's here in the desert with us."

  Qebera leaned toward the closest body, a loinclothed mess, headless. Four ragged wounds sliced across its back. The instrument of death had severed the backbone and thrown vertebrae onto the bloodied ground. The rips were not pretty; they hadn't been done with anything as sharp or thin as blades. "Lions."

  Abadi pivoted to face Qebera directly. "Look, Abydan, I haven't known you long, but I know you aren't a fool. No lion has claws so widely spaced. It would have been a monster."

  "Not a monster, a god. Let's leave this place, and hope it allows us to go."

  "So," the Bedouin mused, "your Set does not discriminate when killing, does he? His people and his enemies alike--"

  "Not Set. Something worse."

  Qebera turned to retreat with Abadi. They jogged to catch up with the others, some of whom already unhobbled their camels.

  The men froze at a deep-throated rumble. It issued from everywhere, like the complaint of an earthquake. The camels bellowed and tried to run. Abadi pivoted, seeking a target for his arrow. Qebera simply stood. No weapon of men would defeat what made that sound.

  "Well," Abadi said. "That's unsettling."

  The rumble sounded again. The men turned toward a stand of giant boulders a long run away, beyond the dead, almost back into the blowing dunes. A beast strolled from behind those boulders, a lioness taller at its shoulders than a man. It turned its massive head toward them and appraised them with its yellow eyes.

  "Hathor," Qebera whispered, his throat gone dry.

  "My God in Heaven!"

  "Don't insult her."

  The lioness threw them a bellicose roar that shook the earth. Even from so far away, Qebera felt the heat of her breath.

  Abadi turned to run, but Qebera caught his arm. "Kneel. Now."

  Abadi stared at him as if he were crazy.

  "Now, if you want to live." Qebera slid his sword from its belt and tossed it onto the sand ahead of him. He fell to his knees, then to his belly, his face in the dust.

  After a moment, Abadi followed suit. Qebera hoped the men did as well.

  He lay there with his face to the earth, hoping the monster was in a good mood, had perhaps sated her appetite for murder and would take the honor he offered her to heart. Those were terrible minutes. The ground trembled from the creature's footfalls and the air hung thick with the blood on her breath. She could have stood right over him, the din was so great and the air so fetid. But Qebera kept his head down. He groveled to a goddess he did not worship for the sake of keeping his guts within his skin.

  Without warning, the rumbling ceased. The pregnant heat of the air diminished. Qebera still kept his face lowered for a good few minutes. Then, cautiously, he peeked.

  A pair of sandaled feminine feet stood before his face. He dropped his eyes again.

  He heard a metallic rattle.

  "Hmm," a delicious, husky voice said. "Nice weapon. I've seen its make before."

  Qebera heard the familiar warble of the bronze blade bent, and released.

  A moment later, the blade slapped the ground with a dull thud from its pommel, then a metallic twang.

  "Are you here to battle Set, or is this just a coincidence?"

  "Our presence here is happenstance, goddess."

  "Hmmph. Well, you grovel well, at least. Be on your way."

  Qebera peeked again. The feet were gone. He scanned the battleground, ready to replace his face in the dirt. The goddess was not in evidence.

  "Thank the gods," he muttered, then scrambled back to his knees. He slapped Abadi and the Bedouin hurried to stand.

  "I'm thinking--" Qebera started.

  "That we should get on those camels and spur them hard? Move quickly, Qebera, or you'll find yourself walking."

  Qebera retrieved his sword, then bolted after Abadi for the imagined safety of their caravan.

  A message arrived the next day, inviting Isis to shop with her sister. The markets were open and boats crowded the quays to barter food again
st furniture, food against clothing, food against anything of value. For gods, food meant nothing, but Nephthys extended her invitation to cheer Isis in her ongoing affliction, or so the story went. The story, of course, was a lie, but insulted Set enough that he likely would believe it.

  Or so the priestesses hoped. Merferet prepared her goddess. She sheathed her in a pleated dress dictated by Nephthys, and crowned her in the required black wig and the carefully specified jewelry. If Nephthys hadn’t mentioned it, Isis didn’t wear it. None of it helped the melancholy that claimed the imprisoned goddess.

  Isis acquiesced to whatever her women devised, but tears wetted her face so that makeup became a challenge. The billowing hooded cloak the goddess wore atop this costume -- a precaution for the sake of men as she walked among them -- was perhaps enough to disguise that problem.

  At the appointed time and when all was just so, Merferet swallowed against her dry throat and led the group from their rooms. She held Isis by one arm while three other priestesses followed close behind. They met no challenge from the guards outside. Instead, the Setim fell in behind as they had the day before, no questions at all.

  Nor did opposition meet them in the palace. They traversed the courtyard fronting the main hall and passed through the gate at the river entrance. Was it possible Nephthys’s plot might work? Merferet might once have prayed for such fortune. Now as she walked the road along the quays, the goddess she trusted could answer no prayers. Instead, her people guarded her, a discomfiting reversal the priestess could live without.

  While Merferet kept her wits alert, she also held Isis by an arm and steered her like an ox among the makeshift stalls at the river market. She had no idea where to go or what to do; she only knew her mistress would be safe if Nephthys’s plan succeeded. She suspected her own fate, a thought that chilled her in the broiling sun. Regardless, Ra would witness her service to his granddaughter. She hoped he would reward her in the afterlife.

  The crowd was thicker than usual that day. The miserable scarecrows of Abydos mixed with merchants off the river, Bedouins out of the desert, and soldiers and officials buying for the palace. The locals hauled wagons filled with the treasures of man: rich furniture and fine linens, artful pottery, sculpture, and weaving, most of it stolen from the houses of the dead. Merferet noticed a massive pile of household goods including masonry tools; two large amphorae; an ox harness and yoke; and a bag full of jewelry, all traded for a small bag of emmer. In better times, the jewelry itself would have purchased a month’s provisions. The recipient of the emmer seemed thankful for his next few meals.

  More people swarmed in similar tragic exchanges through the maze of wagons and tented stalls that made up the market. Many bowed to Isis or moved out of her path, agitating Merferet. How was Isis to blend into the crowd if the crowd insisted on setting her apart? It seemed more than a lark for a goddess to mix with her people. Perhaps the plan wouldn’t work after all.

  Then, the situation changed. The masses closed in. They passed around the priestesses near enough to jostle them and thick enough to hamper their movement. Merferet went from concern for the plan to irritation at the crowd’s increasing impertinence. Then she realized that most of those hemming her in were men -- boys, really -- many with sidelocks beneath hooded linen cloaks.

  “Ignore us,” someone said at her side. “There’s a beer stall a hundred paces straight ahead, close to the water. Move to its south side.”

  Merferet kept walking, steering a suggestible Isis in the hinted direction. Her heart raced as she wondered how the next moments would end.

  The crowd flowed around the priestesses and their goddess. Merchants hawked wares and customers hunted goods or stopped in clutches to complain about prices. All the while the goddess’s party moved toward the beer stall. Young, hard-looking men interposed themselves between Isis and the two trailing guards. They did so gradually, the thickening of the crowd indistinguishable from ordinary market behavior. Then, just as the Setim grew suspicious, and just as Isis reached the dozen large amphorae and their yeasty stench, a human wall rolled between goddess and guards.

  The Setim, having lost sight of their charge, hammered their way through the crowd.

  Nephthys appeared beside Isis, dressed just as her sister except for a lighter colored cloak. As she appeared, a boy from the crowd whipped her cloak from her shoulders while another took her sister’s before Merferet could protest. They switched garments between goddesses, pulling Nephthys’s hood far over Isis’s face. Merferet stood speechless. The boys had made the switch with their eyes closed.

  “Keep your gaze down,” Nephthys said to her sister. “Now’s the advantage of being twins, but I don’t want to press it too far.” The boys pulled Isis away, into the crowd toward the water. Nephthys fell in beside Merferet. “You’d better take my arm, as you had hers. The longer we deceive them, the longer she has to escape.”

  Abruptly, the crowd diminished. The plague of young men seeped into the city like water into sand.

  Merferet wanted to look behind her, convinced the Setim could not have been fooled.

  But, no cry rang out. No hand grabbed her from behind. Merferet’s heart fluttered to an odd beat of triumph and fear, triumph in her lady’s escape, and fear at what must come.

  “I have a plan,” Nephthys said as if reading Merferet’s mind. “We’ll head up the way toward my barge. Another boat stands nearby, ready to take you aboard. They will only take you a short way downstream, then hand you off to a Bedouin party paid to take you overland to Fayum. The way will be hard and you must do whatever they say. Be on your guard. They aren’t as impressed as Egyptians when it comes to threats from gods.”

  Bedouins? Gods! “Why not stay on the boat?”

  “The boat is a ruse. They’ll waste precious time chasing it down while you escape to the deep desert. When they realize you travel overland, they’ll also abandon any water search for Isis. They'll assume she’s with you.”

  Merferet looked at Nephthys, impressed. This goddess vindicated all hopes for her aid. “Goddess, I must say, you seem as though you do this every day.”

  “When you live under Set, you learn underhandedness.”

  They stopped at a stall of half-rotted sausages. Flies swarmed on the hanging meat, implanting it with maggots. Merferet’s brow furrowed. Something unpleasant occurred to her. She glanced to her fellow priestesses to see if they thought the same, but they occupied themselves peeking at the guards. She put her concern to Nephthys. “Goddess, excuse me, but ... how exactly will they learn of the ruse?”

  “You won’t be on the boat when they search it, of course.” Nephthys poked a dripping roll of meat. "I wonder if this is human."

  “Yes, goddess, but ... how will they know to search the boat?”

  “They’ll suspect it after they question me.”

  Merferet’s mouth dropped open. She wanted to speak, but nothing came out. By the time she recovered, it was far too late.

  One of the guards approached the stall. He sidled around to the back, eyeing Nephthys and scaring the vendor.

  Nephthys waited a dramatic interval while the soldier’s face pantomimed suspicion, then surprise, then unguarded worry.

  “Yes?” Nephthys asked, arching one eyebrow as she looked over another flyblown hunk of meat. The soldier flinched.

  “I beg your pardon, goddess ... uh, Nephthys. I thought you were the goddess Isis.”

  “I realize we bear a close resemblance, but I am not the goddess Isis. Now, could you please stop staring at me?”

  “Your pardon again, goddess, but ... where is Isis?”

  Nephthys turned full-face on the guard. Merferet marveled at her cool. “I don’t keep watch on the goddess Isis. If you seek her, consult her Setim escort.”

  “Goddess, I am--”

  “Oh? Then I suggest you find her quickly. Your lord will not approve of mortals losing his toy. If it helps, she told me she was ill and would return to her rooms.”

 
The guard looked from Nephthys to the four women and back to Nephthys. “Returned?” he said, really concerned. “By herself?”

  “No, with her attendants, of course.”

  The guard’s worry deepened. He recognized Merferet, but wasn’t prepared to call his goddess a liar.

  “Is there a problem?” Nephthys prodded.

  “No, goddess. It’s just ... I thought..."

  “I haven’t time for this. If you wish to find the goddess Isis, I suggest you do so without pestering me. You’ve already soured my taste for shopping. I’ll be on my barge with my attendants.” With that, she turned away, headed toward the water. The priestesses followed close behind. The guard stood gape-mouthed in their wake.

  “He’ll come about in a moment,” Nephthys told Merferet. “If he remains true to the Setim norm, he’ll hurry back to the palace, check on Isis just to be safe, then return with someone in greater authority. The other one will remain to keep us in sight, so we must move quickly.”

  “How can you--?”

  “I know these people. Here is my barge. This is where we part. The next boat down is yours. Board without a word and do whatever they ask.” She stopped at her ramp and waited for the priestesses to continue.

  “Goddess, how can we thank--?”

  “By leaving. Now.”

  Merferet fidgeted, torn by priorities. Should she escape, or stand by this goddess she admired, but didn’t love as she loved her Isis?

  “Leave now, human, or you’ll be killed. The crew on that boat will be killed, as well. Go. Now.”

  The four women bowed low to Nephthys, then hurried to the next boat almost at a run.

  They dragged her only a few paces before handing her off to a second team of boys. The trade occurred one stall over from Nephthys, at a dusty pile of clothes ostensibly there for barter. Isis’s new handlers removed her cloak and tossed it into a space between stalls. They replaced it with another from the haphazard pile, a rougher garment that reached to her sandaled feet. Again, they took care in this deft operation, for it was said that sight or touch of this goddess could drive men happily mad.