Isis Wept

by Stephan Loy

  Anubis stood next to Isis, his face earnest and flushed. “What can I do?” he asked of Hordedev.

  “This,” Isis said, and grabbed his hand.

  Both deities shuddered, and Anubis's eyes widened. He tried to shake loose Isis's grip, but she held onto him with desperate strength. Hordedev thought Osiris moved, or maybe he convulsed under the power of two gods.

  “You see,” Osiris said, “they’ve come for you.”

  A serpentine cord of light appeared through the gray. It quested about like a blind beast. Nephthys recognized her lifeline, but stepped away from its approach, shaking her head against rising nausea. “I can’t,” she said aloud to herself. “I can’t go back and tell her that. I can’t return empty-handed.”

  “You’ll have to,” Osiris said. “I can’t go back. She’ll understand. I can’t leave this little girl forever lost and frightened.”

  Nephthys watched the light with dread fascination. It dodged this way, then that, sniffing her out like a hound.

  Osiris invaded her worry. “I ask of you a favor, Nephthys. If you truly are a goddess of death, find the path to the afterlife. Lead me there, that I might lead others.”

  Nephthys felt a second wave of nausea. Was there no end to torment? “I can’t do that!” she shrilled, and doubled-up as if punched. “I don’t know the way!”

  “No.” Osiris reached for her and gently caressed her cheek. “But you will.”

  And, what could she say to that? Why was he always so infernally understanding? By Ra and Nun, she wasn’t a child!

  She last glimpsed Osiris through tearful eyes. He embraced the little girl. He didn’t look at Nephthys. Neither of them looked at the light that darted toward her. They seemed somehow embarrassed by its brilliance, as if caught unworthy before it. In that one instant she understood death, and vowed to her roots to subdue it.

  Then the light impaled her, and snatched her back to the world.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  She crashed back amidst mud, rain, growling jackals and cursing men. Anubis took her into his arms and shielded her from the melee. Nephthys noted the drained look of his face and the tremble in his arms as he lifted her out of the muck. Her face contorted from sorrow and shame. “He wouldn’t come,” she wailed into the rain. “I’m sorry, I'm sorry. He wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t make him come.”

  Hordedev stood by Isis at the platform holding Osiris, men in close combat staggering against it.

  “He wouldn’t come back! He wouldn’t come!”

  “Who wouldn’t come?” Anubis asked. “Osiris?”

  Isis stiffened. She turned to the body atop the platform, almost collapsing. Hordedev hovered beside her, clearly unsure what he should do.

  Osiris lay on his planks, solid and full of color. But he lay still, without breathing. He might have been a clay sculpture, a funerary image of himself.

  “Where is my husband?” Isis's voice rose in pitch with each sharpened syllable until Nephthys was sure she’d fly into hysteria.

  “I'm sorry, Isis. I'm so, so sorry.”

  “Gods, Nephthys, what have you done?”

  This amid a rage of animals, men, and clashing weapons.

  Two combatants crashed into Anubis. He staggered, glared at them, and they dropped their weapons. They convulsed and gurgled blood until they fell to the viscous ground. Jackals leapt to rend their flesh while men nearby retreated in horror, Osiran and Setim alike.

  “To the boat!” Hordedev shouted, and scooped Isis into his arms. “Anubis, quickly! Retreat! Amnet, load the body!” He had no idea who listened, but something had to be done, something besides getting hacked to bits by the Setim.

  He dodged through a hole left by the stunned combatants, a hysterical Isis bawling in his ear. A thought buzzed in the back of his mind, almost smothered by fear and the need to flee. Here he carried the goddess of life, and with no more impairment than drinking too much beer.

  He found a boat before the Setim recovered. He dropped Isis in, and took up the pole. Anubis staggered aboard, Nephthys held close to his torso.

  “Push off! Push off!” the god commanded, and Hordedev did not delay.

  Setim dived at the vessel. The Osirans deflected some, as did Anubis’s killing stare. Some of the Setim attacked through the water, whether slogging through the brackish slime or poling over in boats. Some got as close as gripping the soggy rails, but could not contend with Hordedev’s pole, wielded as a stave. After a few chancy moments, the boat drifted free of attackers and into the cloaking night. Automatically, Hordedev steered for the south and west, away from the enemy whose approach he knew.

  Still on the island, Amnet rallied his men. Some tried to remove Osiris, but Hordedev saw their effort was lost. Too many Setim swarmed the place. Hordedev couldn’t imagine how his friends would escape.

  He had almost decided to turn back and help when a great wind blasted the swamp. It howled through the trees and rushes like an animal, flinging water, mud and vegetable matter into a cyclone about the battle. Hordedev watched as men fell in the black, thrashing waters. Amnet’s people dropped their king, then scrambled into the swamp to retrieve the body. But, they never recovered their god. They never even saw what kept them from his side.

  Hordedev did. His eyes bulged at what formed atop the now vacant platform. In all his days as a rebel fighter, he had never seen such a horror. He had witnessed only the terrors shaped by men. He had never stood against monsters.

  A gigantic scorpion appeared atop the platform. Hordedev could see straight through it, could see countless bits of sand whirling to form its body. It moved as if alive, larger than a man and full of a thrill for blood. Hordedev watched mesmerized as its great pincers shredded the remaining combatants, Osirans and Setim alike. He watched as Amnet slogged through water to defend his fallen god. The ex-priest held an ax in bloody hands. Unlike the others, he faced the monster; he did not flee in terror. In this, he proved himself worthy of Osiris, serving his master to the worst possible end. That end came when the monster’s barbed tail lashed out over its body. It impaled Amnet and whipped him aloft like a hooked fish. Amnet’s screams seared Hordedev’s nerves. Mercifully, the dark drew in, closing off the scene if not the din around it.

  “Set,” Anubis said as he settled his mother into the boat.

  Set stepped from the boat before it securely grounded. He showed no notice of the bloody offal of murder or of the beast responsible. He stalked the island, circling the platform, looking for something that wasn’t there. His aides hesitated leaving the boat, afraid to meet the fate of all those dead around them. But they were also afraid of their master, and therefore of not joining him. The first human timidly disembarked only as Hathor’s vessel pulled up.

  “Well?” the goddess called from her seat as a priestess dabbed sweat from her brow. “Did you find our prize, my darling?”

  “Nothing here!” Set growled from shadow. “Nothing here but crocodile food!”

  “Are you sure? You’ve just arrived. Bearers, torches, please.”

  Hathor’s crew disembarked, six priestesses and one male pilot. They took torches with them, thin braids of reeds lit from a brazier in the middle of the boat. As they slogged over the muddy channel, they fanned out, washing the place in eerie, uneven light. They avoided the scorpion. Light passed through it as if through a ghost.

  “They’ve escaped!” Set bellowed. “Always, they escape! This was to be my revenge!” In a fit, he pushed over the platform. Its wood supports collapsed and its makeshift slab clattered to planks. The scorpion staggered clear, stumbling into one unfortunate priestess. The girl gasped as swirling, sandy innards scoured her skin and ate her muscle. She fell like a post to the earth, dead before she splashed the mud. Her torch went out in the rain.

  “You’re too impetuous,” Hathor scolded her lover. “You’re far too quick to admit defeat, and far too slow to think your way out of it. These are gods you pursue. They--” She flitted a hand in the air. “Spr
ead out, ladies. I know it’s a shock, but we can’t help her now.” She returned her attention to Set. “They have resources beyond those of humans, but they’re unused to being the object of a hunt. I would rather have found them waiting here for us, round-eyed and confused, but I’m sure there’s something left behind, something they didn’t intend. Something to give us power?”

  A priestess hesitated as she slogged through knee-deep mud, then ventured farther into the water. The others noticed and turned to intercept her.

  “You see, my darling, they haven’t escaped at all. That corpse attached to your little pet’s tail, do you recognize the face?”

  “Stop prattling, Hathor! You make it hard to think!”

  Hathor clicked her tongue. “You never paid much attention to humans. Look at him, Set. It’s Amnet, that high priest of Osiris. If he was here, then so were Isis and Nephthys, and recently, too.”

  “Goddess,” a priestess called. “We’ve found something.” The torchbearers ringed their find, casting it in wavering light.

  “Oh,” Hathor said, pleased with herself. “Did I mention something to give us power?”

  For a moment, the island lay silent except for the guttering torches.

  “Pull him out,” Set whispered, and four of his aides sprang to obey. In moments, Osiris’s body lay at Set’s feet.

  “You see?” Hathor called from her waterborne lounge. “No honest effort goes without reward.”

  Set didn’t hear her. He stared at the corpse, his enemy even in death. He stared through the mud and the filthy rags of vestments to vital, blood-filled flesh. Except for its stillness, the body displayed more life than Set could claim for himself.

  “So, that was her plan.” He held out his hand, palm up. The hand trembled from barely suppressed rage. “Weapon.”

  Someone slapped an ax into his hand. Set gripped it, flexing his fingers. He still stared down at Osiris, and his eyes bulged. The veins in his temples throbbed, and his teeth gnashed on drool.

  “You were the one,” he whispered in a voice like scraping stones. “You, they loved. You, they served without question. Even in death you commanded them. You inspired them to defy me, to bring my kingdom down. And now she seeks to bring you back, so that you might destroy me yourself.” He stalked around the body, hefting the ax. His eyes never left his dead brother’s form. “Well, I can’t be destroyed, dear Osiris, not by you or your puny, treasonous flock. I cannot be destroyed, my brother, but that isn’t true of you.”

  He swung the ax. Its flint blade thumped into flesh and recoiled off bone. Undaunted, he swung again, snapping off a hand at the wrist. “I spit upon you!” he roared, and brought down the ax again. “I curse the day I entered this world and found you born beside me! I curse your name! I curse your damnable sisters! If I had them here, they would join in your fate!” The ax rang off a kneecap, and its blade splintered to pieces. A needlelike shard caught in the storm god’s forearm and he dropped the haft from the sting of it.

  He breathed in grunts and fits. He grabbed the splinter with his opposite hand and yanked it free of his flesh. His eyes burned into the bloody meat that had once walked earth as his twin, and all he felt was jealous rage. “Killing you wasn’t enough." He raised his arms, commanding the sands to form to his will. “She still loves you. She still wants you.” There wasn’t much sand he could use in that swamp, so he borrowed two of the scorpion’s legs. “I am the god of storms, the god of the desert and chaos. I am the lord of Abydos, the lord of Abu Simbel. If that is not enough, if she still wants you, so be it! I send you to the goddess of life! Go to her as fertilizer!”

  The sand whipped into a blade like that of a Setim ax. It hovered over Osiris a moment, then slashed at him with such speed that no one could follow its strokes. The body thrashed and blood flew. Set was bathed in the gruesome mess. Finally, the blade paused in the air, then dissipated into a sprinkle of grit.

  Set stooped over the gore. He reached into the mess and extracted a lower leg. “Aides!”

  Reluctantly, his officers approached. Set shoved body parts into their arms, oblivious of the horror plain on their faces. “Take these. Send them by messenger far over Egypt. Dispose of them as trash that the pieces may never come together again. Throw them in ditches and lonely dunes. Throw them to crocodiles, jackals and pigs. Ensure no trace can be found of them, now or ever while this world stands. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, lord, yes!”

  “Then go! Wait!” Set grabbed the poor man stuck with the bloody pelvis. He took a knife from the man’s linen belt, then ripped at the rag of a kilt matting the hacked at prize. With shocking disinterest, he found the dead god’s penis, yanked it taut, and sliced it off at the base. He laughed, and held the shaft aloft.

  “There, Isis, your cherished toy!” he bellowed into the swamp. “Now, it’s food for fishes!”

  “No!” Anubis hissed. “Left channel! Left channel!”

  “Left? Are you crazy?” Hordedev nevertheless edged in that direction. “Left is upstream, slow and no wind. We’ll never make headway--”

  “We don’t need headway. We need the north Merimde eddy. People are there to help us.”

  Hordedev heaved on the pole. He grunted at it, for he could feel the river starting to fight. He glanced from the black clumps of trees to the black ooze of water, then back to Anubis and the goddesses. Isis sobbed, restrained from loud, mournful laments only by the risk of Setim detection. She huddled in a ball on the reed deck, holding her chest. Nephthys slumped in her son’s strong embrace, her eyes vacant, her posture deflated. Anubis seemed reluctant to leave her. All these gods, Hordedev thought, and he still feared for his life.

  “People?” he whispered across to Anubis. “You couldn’t have mentioned that earlier?”

  “Oh, very sorry. I didn’t know I reported to you. I’ll do better in the future, Lord Overseer of Gods.”

  Hordedev frowned. “It’ll take us all night to reach Merimde, assuming we don’t get lost. For all I know--”

  “We aren’t lost. Watch the banks.”

  Hordedev squinted into the darkness. At first he saw nothing but the shadows of trees, then caught a hint of twin twinkling lights, like stars come to rest upon earth. It startled him to realize that the lights were eyes returning his stare.

  “My four-legged friends, what’s left of them,” Anubis explained. “They’ll guide us. Just do as I say.”

  Hordedev sighed and obeyed. He heaved against the pole, and felt his muscles complain. But, at least he felt pain. Amnet and the others would never feel pain again.

  Hordedev cataloged his dangers, a habit of organization and a buffer against the strain. The north Merimde eddy touched the deep desert, the home of Set, who wanted them destroyed. Why did Anubis flirt at the door to the evil one’s lair? Of course, the enemy raked the swamps with Setim, a good reason to seek other climes. There were also lions, the servants of Hathor, and Set loosed monsters that stalked with soulless efficiency. Where were those horrors? Did their master hold them leashed at the island, or did they wait in ambush ahead? Hordedev considered the eyes in the dark. Who could say those eyes offered friendship? Who could say they all served Anubis?

  Hordedev fought a sudden urge to speak with Isis, to offer his apology and swear his fealty once again. The need was intense, as if no later chance would come. But Isis could not endure conversation; she was buried in sorrow.

  Hordedev shivered under his thoughts, and continued to push for the south and west.

  Hathor allowed him his moment, then coughed into her hand. Until then, Set had defied the stars, had held aloft his enemy’s manhood as if it were a prize, a trophy of utter victory. Now, with her cough, his arms slowly dropped. His shoulders slumped to a whipped demeanor, and Hathor smiled with perverse satisfaction.

  “There is still the chase, O Lord of Storms,” she said with mock formality. “We wouldn’t want to lose them by celebrating early.”

  Set stood with his eyes to the grou
nd, helpless before his better. He looked a long time at the penis in one hand, and gawked at the blood drenching his body. He seemed to just realize the violence he had wrought, and was amazed at his own extremes. “Where are they?” he asked.

  Hathor took her time while signaling her priestesses back to the boat. “Well, I can’t easily say. My sources have difficulty in this swamp; they prefer the drier upper regions.”

  “Just where are they, Hathor?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, if you don’t mind. My cats find no trace of gods on foot, and the moon has hidden behind clouds, which complicates things.”

  Set’s eyes snapped to the heavens. “Thoth! Even now you meddle!”

  “Now, there seems to be a problem with jackals...”

  Set flinched at her words. Hathor enjoyed pricking his senses. He was so much the puppet in her hands. “These jackals, curiously, are roaming in packs and attacking lone lions. Odd behavior for scavengers, don’t you think?”

  “Where?”

  “South and west, O Great God of Vengeance.”

  "To my desert," Set said. He raised one hand and flicked its fingers into the dark. “Seek. Seek, and destroy.”

  The monster scorpion froze as if digesting its master’s command. Then it flew apart in a cloud of sand. As if on a gale, the particles flashed away to the west.

  Amnet’s body, freed from impalement on the scorpion’s tail, dropped like a stone to the litter of dead.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Qebera started awake, reaching for the sword beside him. He found Abadi crouched at his shoulder. “What? What’s happened?” he asked the Bedouin.

  “Someone approaches.” When Qebera nodded, Abadi turned away and stalked through the campsite.

  Qebera shook his head to clear it. He glanced about, ignoring the dead fire and the profusion of gear unloaded from the camels. Naasir was missing, but he ignored that, too. His eyes sought only Sanni. He found her a few paces away, staring at him from her bedroll of wool.