Isis Wept

by Stephan Loy

  Qebera closed his eyes as she spoke. It was obvious he fought back tears. “Ebana?” he asked, afraid for his youngest, just three when he left.

  “Starved,” Sanni answered. “And the bleeding runs.”

  Qebera crumbled. He climbed from his horse in a slow ballet of grief, gripping the animal’s side as if to keep from falling off. When his feet, trembling, found the ground, he muttered a question through sobs. “Hordedev?”

  “We don’t know. He joined the rebels. We haven’t heard from him since.”

  Qebera leaned against his mount. He stayed there a very long time. Sanni waited, respecting her husband’s torment. She had, after all, lived through it herself.

  After a while, Qebera spoke again. “My heart...” His fingers gripped the horse’s mane. He avoided Sanni’s eyes.

  “It was a long time ago,” Sanni said. “The wounds are long since scabbed.”

  “Not in me, they aren’t!” The muscles in Qebera’s jaw worked, even as tears streamed down his face. Everyone waited while he forced control. “I don’t deserve to be here,” he sobbed into his saddle blanket. “If I hadn’t left...”

  “If you hadn’t left, something else would have happened. Our lives weren’t meant to be pretty.” Sanni stepped forward and put a filthy hand on Qebera’s shoulder. “Come,” she insisted. “We’ll go to the house. Recriminations are harder on a full stomach.”

  Qebera sat in the shadow of Sanni’s house. He thought of it as hers; he hadn’t chosen it, he hadn’t worked its land, and he had lived too long in the desert. He sat in the dirt before Sanni’s front door, more comfortable there than inside at the table. He watched the river near at hand, watched it darken as night claimed the earth. He heard Sanni walking up behind him and the girls whispering at the door.

  “They no longer know you,” Sanni said. “If you choose to stay, that may change.”

  “For years, I thought you were dead,” Qebera sighed, his eyes trained at the darkening soil before him. “The city destroyed, no word anywhere. I gave up hope a long time ago. Then that man in the city, he pointed me here...” Qebera swallowed, and his voice cracked as he went on. “I don’t deserve to return to you. While you barely survived on grass and bugs, I lived in a tent, my belly full, with livestock of my own to milk, eat, shear or sell.”

  “Your mission kept you away from us. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “I should have stayed with my family.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. You did your duty. Could I respect anything less? Anyway, you were never very domestic. You would have been in the way.”

  Qebera recognized the joke; he also recognized the truth hidden within it. He wanted to laugh at that mirror of his folly, but his three lost children weighed upon him. “I could have done something. Nefera, Ebana, Hordedev. I could have made a difference.”

  “That’s true,” Sanni agreed. She stepped around to his front, stirring red dust with her bare feet. “That’s occurred to me from time to time. You might have talked Hordedev into staying. You might have stopped those Setim dogs from taking Nefera away from us. You might have found us food by some miracle, and Ebana would not have wasted away.” She shrugged. “Or, you might have died as well as the girls, and I’d be mourning a husband as well as three children. You did what you could, Qebera. We all did. We’re only people, after all, caught in a game between lords of the earth. We’re people, Qebera. Not gods, not kings, just people. As such, we’re made to suffer.”

  They endured silence a very long time, her unspoken question hanging about them. Qebera grasped the pouch hanging from his neck. He thought of the ornate bow balanced from his saddle.

  “I can’t stay,” he said. His wife didn't move. “I’m still a target, and I carry the Eye of Ra in this pouch. I promised the goddess--”

  “No need. I didn’t think you’d stay. I hoped, but that was all.”

  “Sanni, please. I’ve made arrangements with friends. The Bedouins and the rebels often eat together. You can get out any time you want. You could come to live with me.”

  “In a desert? Moving forever from place to place, following water and game? That sort of life is not for me, old husband. It isn’t for you, either.”

  Qebera frowned. He had hoped she’d follow him out of Abydos, but knew her too well to feel surprise. “Sanni, I want to stay, but this is so much bigger than us...”

  “I’m sure it is.” She sighed, and emphatically dusted something from her hands. “Anyway, we’ll be here when your mission is over. When your goddess no longer needs you, there are those of us here who do.”

  Qebera’s frown deepened to a scowl. Did she think him so indifferent? “I’ve made arrangements. Friends are watching you. If you wish to join me, they will discover it. If you’re threatened, they’ll tell me. I know my duty, Sanni.” His wife made no response. “Please, don’t hate me...”

  “I don’t hate you, Qebera. I never could. You’re the same man I married years ago, and none of this is your fault. I don’t even hate those underhanded gods, though it’s their fault, if anyone's. They are, after all, less free than we. They are forces of nature, as blameless as the weather.” She spat into the dust, and started back toward the house.

  Is that it? Qebera wondered. Blameless as the weather? Set kills his own brother, destroys a kingdom, as good as murders two lovely girls, perhaps also a boy, and he can’t be held accountable? An extra hot day? A freak sandstorm, nothing more?

  Sanni’s wholesome meal rolled in his stomach. A moment later, he stared at it in the soil between his knees.

  Egypt was only a word to Queen Astarte of Byblos. Her husband, King Malacander, handled the gritty details of trade, state and war; Astarte merely adorned the court, and also the royal bed. She performed her duties well, for all the city-state of Byblos bragged of her beauty, and she had borne the king a son. She could not have improved her standing if she had personally conquered the Canaanite bands always harassing her kingdom’s borders. Still, the emotion first in Astarte’s heart was not joy, or hubris, or sublime equanimity. It was fear. Queen Astarte feared for her infant child.

  She waited in her bright quarters, staring out a large, square window to the ship-speckled sea. She waited for the guards to deliver her baby’s nurse, and she held herself, trembling. The nurse. She had seemed such a great idea. She had shown such knowledge and talent with infants, had made the prince glow with life. The maids and ladies had endorsed her ardently, though for no great reason, it now stood revealed. The woman had ... smelled right for the job, as if she were nurture defined. The queen had thought herself clever when she indentured old Asa for little more than room and board. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

  She heard the tromp of sandals and the clatter of leather armor. She turned to face the door and forced herself to an air of royal forbearance.

  The door opened and two guards entered with the cloaked woman before them.

  “The nurse Asa!” one guard announced, and saluted his queen.

  Astarte nodded. “Leave us, but keep near.”

  “As you wish, my queen.” The men retreated, leaving the door ajar.

  Astarte stared at the hunched, cloaked figure half a room away. How, she thought, had she been so stupid as to hire someone whose face she’d never seen? What witchery had this monster released that dulled the common skill of reason? There had been an issue of disfigurement — never proven, only suggested — which had explained a hidden face but lusciously youthful hands. Lies. Lies and treachery.

  “Tell me who you are,” Astarte demanded.

  The hooded form betrayed no concern. “I don’t understand, your highness. I’m but a common nurse, one you call Asa.”

  “Don’t trifle with me. I am Astarte, queen of Byblos. I can have you imprisoned at a whim, beaten, stoned, torn apart by lions. You are no mere nurse. I saw you. I saw you circling my husband’s obelisk late last night in the throne room. I saw you change from a bird to a woman afterwards. I saw you before you pulled on
your robes and threw up that hood to hide your face, and you are no disfigured crone, you lying beast.”

  The figure stood a little straighter. “You saw? Then that explains it.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I have never lied to you,” the figure said, “not about what matters.”

  “What matters!” Astarte lost her composure. “What matters! I saw you turn from a bird to a woman! I saw my nearby son in flames! You aren’t even human! Does that not matter?”

  “No, what--”

  “What manner of demon are you, Asa, if Asa is truly your name? What--”

  A hand shot up, a lovely, unblemished hand. “Silence,” the nurse commanded.

  Astarte clamped her mouth shut.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” the robed figure said. “My deception was necessary, that I might accomplish my quest and protect your kingdom.”

  “Who are you? What have you done to my son?”

  Two hands came up and threw back the voluminous hood. When that face took the light through the room’s large window, Astarte almost swooned on a wave of awe, jealousy, and, yes, even desire. It was worse than the giddiness she had felt the previous night, worse because of the much closer source and the much tighter room. Now the figure spoke, but Astarte found it hard to hear the words. “I am Isis, rightful queen of Abydos far to your south and west. I came seeking my husband, betrayed in jealousy and greed. His body came to your shores in an elaborate coffin. A tamarisk tree grew up about it and became huge and perfect in the presence of his spirit. Your husband found that tree and admired it so much that he cut it down and brought it to his palace, where it stands in his throne room to awe his guests. I need that obelisk, Queen Astarte. It’s carved from the trunk of that tamarisk tree, and my husband is entombed within.”

  “Isis,” Astarte whispered, her voice quavering. She could barely stand. She leaned against the windowsill, Isis’s power beating against her like the worst of desert heat. The woman was so beautiful, so perfectly, achingly alive. She made Astarte feel cheap. “But, Isis is only a myth...”

  “A myth to some, the font of life to others.” Isis stepped away from the queen, into the shadows. “It took me years to track Osiris here, but track him I have. I feel his essence within that tree. I need that tree, Astarte, though I’ve nothing to trade for it. I thought I could offer a service. I could make your son impervious to disease, essentially make him immortal--”

  “Immortal!”

  “--and you would then give me the tree in return. But that plan was ruined when you discovered my secret. The spell broke between your son and creation. And I haven't the strength to do it again.”

  Astarte mentally gripped herself. “Isis, if that’s who you are. I don’t believe you were helping my son. I think you came to kill him, not to make him immortal!”

  Isis stared at her as if she were daft. “Ridiculous. I’m a goddess of life; I could no sooner kill a child than you could grow a beard.”

  A goddess! “My baby was in flames! Now, he cries all the time! He doesn’t eat!”

  “Yes. He’s disoriented from losing his link to the gods. He’ll learn to tolerate the drab mortal world. Right now he grumbles about it.”

  “He was in flames!”

  “Was he burned?” Isis sounded impatient, as if they belabored the obvious.

  “What?”

  “Was he burned?”

  Astarte felt suddenly foolish. No, he hadn’t been burned. But, the sight of him in flames...

  “The fire was mine, to armor his mortal skin. It would never have harmed him.” Isis pulled the hood back over her head. Covering her face was like an eclipse. The heat of her beauty vanished, and Astarte felt a trickle of strength. She steeled herself, even took a step toward the pacing cloak. Isis’s godhood meant little to her; she lived in the land of Baal.

  “You steal into this kingdom under false pretenses, steal into this very palace! You play terrible games with my son and frighten me half to death. And you expect forgiveness? I am queen here, and won’t be treated thus. You, Asa, are a demon spy!”

  “Forgive my bluntness, Astarte, but you’re no queen of consequence; you’re only human. I am a god of Egypt.”

  “Isis is a fairy tale!”

  The pile of cloak turned toward the queen. “Take care. My patience isn’t what it once might have been. This metaphor is not a graven image.”

  Her warning brought Astarte up short. She had seen Isis’s bird, after all, and the flames about the prince. She had never seen Baal.

  “Make no mistake,” Isis continued. “I will have that tree. I meant to provide a fair exchange, but I will have it regardless.”

  Astarte's fear, blown away in the presence of power, returned, but the queen of Byblos did not quail at threats. Instead, she took another step toward Isis. “I am queen of this nation. My husband Malacander has held this realm for twenty-seven years by force of arms. He held it against Ebla, Jericho, Shechem, and others. We are fighters. We are survivors. You will not speak thus in this place.”

  Surprisingly, the rejoinder had an effect. As suddenly as she had loosed her threat, Isis collapsed into herself. She clasped her hands before her, and every syllable of body language begged. “Please, please. Don’t make me resort to such means. I’m unpracticed in force, but I am determined. Please--”

  Astarte straightened, feeling an advantage, and opened her mouth to speak. She intended a remark thick with haughtiness, rooted in defiance. Isis cut her off.

  “You have everything. Your husband, power, wonderful daughters and a beautiful son. Your people love you and your kingdom thrives. May you never know the trials I’ve suffered. My husband is lost in the darkness of the west. My kingdom is no more, enslaved by my husband’s enemy. I’ve no one to support me in my anguish, no one at all, and all my power cannot change these facts. Though I am immortal, life is but a torture of grief, grief that may never end. I have little hope, Queen Astarte, and all of it lies through you. Please, please, let me have my husband. You are but a mortal, but you possess a power I do not: the power to deny a bereaved goddess or to give her hope for life. Please, I beg you, have mercy on me...”

  And what, Astarte thought, could she possibly say against that?

  King Malacander was gray and gouty. He had kept his kingdom by wise rule and ruthless defense, but he knew one force that overawed wisdom and might, and against which only love prevailed. He knew his wife and her demands. Decades his junior, she thought differently, felt differently and showed more energy than her aging spouse. He knew she could leave him anytime she wanted; kings would kill to have her in their arms, and some of those kings were younger and richer. They could offer Astarte temptation if treasures were measured in carnal gifts or material goods. But they couldn’t offer her love, as Malacander did in abundance.

  That love tended to accede to her wishes, even when inconvenient. So, he leaned forward from his throne, elbows on knees, hearing the pleas of a bent old woman he might otherwise have dismissed. His wife had said he should give her an audience. His wife, as usual, was right.

  “So,” he said in his gravelly voice, his eyes squinted to watch his petitioner. “You come to me in disguise, dear lady, to work witchery upon my only heir, and you say you are my friend?”

  “No,” the bundle of robes answered. “I say I mean no harm.”

  “But the queen says the boy is bewitched. He screams constantly, and will not eat. The physician says he might die.”

  “He will not die. He is not bewitched. He is only ... disturbed.”

  The king scratched his chin. He turned his gaze about the room, to his anxious wife by the doors, surrounded by guards and retainers. He then looked to the twenty-odd foreign disciples of this curious old woman. Rousted from the ship on which they lived, they had been brought to witness their mistress’s fate. Astarte had seemed both touched and frightened when recounting the strange woman’s claims. And the foreigners had supported that fantastic story. The king
himself had cause to believe, but he hated to damage his wonderful tree.

  Malacander glanced to the obelisk. It stood centered in the room, reaching from the floor to a ceiling six men high. It was seven cubits wide at the base and not much narrower anywhere else. An extraordinary find, that improbable tree. He had never seen its like. No one had.

  “He will not die,” the king said, milking skepticism from his voice. “You came to make him immortal, in exchange for a tree?”

  “No, wise king. For the body within the tree.”

  “The body, you say, of a god.”

  “My husband, Osiris.”

  Malacander nodded. The whole conversation was a ploy for time to think. Everyone else had spoken their minds, now it was time to make up his. He leaned closer to Isis, almost to the edge of his seat. “Well. I knew your husband, young lady, if you are who you say. Twenty-three years ago he came to this place. He showed us how to harvest the purple dyes on which we base our livelihood as a people. A very wise man, Osiris of Egypt. He drank with the best of us, told stories with the best of us. He pined for his wife, the unquestioned beauty of the world, loved by all who beheld her. My own Astarte was only a child, so such terrible beauty I could scarcely imagine. Surely, though, none could surpass my queen in perfection. Perhaps you could show us the woman Osiris loved, that I might believe what you claim.” He made this challenge with keen eyes alert, sure of what it would teach him.

  Isis turned her hooded head from side to side, taking in the crowd of staring people.

  Malacander rose from his throne. He stepped down from the dais to Isis. His robes flowed, a floor-length breeze of blue, purple and white. His royal regalia glinted from his glass crown and lapis lazuli collar to the flint sword hung at his side. His authority commanded the room.

  “It’s a small thing,” Malacander said. “Show us beauty in exchange for trust?”