Isis Wept

by Stephan Loy

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” He checked the stars for the time, then returned his eyes to his wife. “You’d best pack the gear, essentials firsts. I’ll go find out.”

  Sanni nodded and Qebera threw off his covers. He took only his sword as he treaded after Abadi.

  He found the Bedouin just short of the water, kneeling with Naasir. Their hunting bows were drawn and they peered into the predawn darkness, still and expectant as cats about to strike. The camp had been pitched only fifty paces from the eddy’s sharp curve to take advantage of trees for shade and grass to lie on. Days ago, this had seemed ideal. Now, with unknown visitors invisible in the night, it seemed a careless blunder.

  “Where?” Qebera kneeled beside Abadi.

  “Shh! On the water. Two men whispering.”

  Qebera concentrated, listening for the slightest sound. He fingered the pouch at his chest.

  There. A murmur of voices. Male, a little testy? Something else tickled Qebera’s senses, something familiar.

  One sound rose above the others. Qebera recognized a woman’s sobs.

  “Isis! Stop that! We can’t afford the slip!”

  Qebera met Abadi’s eyes. The men didn’t relax, but they sighed in relief.

  “Naasir, to the camp,” Abadi ordered. “Help Sanni load the gear.”

  “But, I wanted to meet the goddess...”

  “Now, Naasir. We’ll be gone as soon as possible.”

  Naasir grumbled, but did as directed. Qebera and Abadi stood at the water’s edge. “Hail, the boat!” Qebera called in a low tone, enough to carry, but not too far.

  Silence answered his call. For a moment, he regretted the gesture, having exposed himself but not his visitors. Then he heard the telltale slosh of a rudder pole in water, and a shadow appeared not far from the bank.

  “Are you from Thoth to protect the goddesses Isis and Nephthys?” The voice held arrogance, as if fear could not touch its owner.

  Abadi grabbed the boat. “That’s us. All four of us.”

  “Four? But Thoth promised an army.” A slim male figure leapt from the boat and helped pull it more from the water. Qebera scanned the vessel and found only questions. A still shadow stood at the stern, manning the pole. Nephthys sat ahead of him, slumped and dull, her linen dress blackened with mud. Someone else lay coiled on the deck, smothered in a filthy cloak and shuddering from sobs. Qebera assumed that this was Isis.

  “The army declined,” Qebera said. “Thoth overestimates his influence outside Egypt.” He straightened, and faced the man. “Now, who are you, and what’s going on?”

  The newcomer seemed to pause for introductions. He did so graciously, as if heading a formal receiving line. Then the first indirect light of dawn caught his head in bizarre transmutation. Abadi gasped and stumbled away, almost falling into the river. Qebera had witnessed such stunts before, and was not impressed.

  The figure stood before them with the head of a slavering jackal. “I am Anubis, son of Nephthys and Osiris. I have rescued my mother and the goddess Isis from unnamable abuse by the storm god Set and his mistress, Hathor. Help me get them to Fayum, where Thoth will grant them sanctuary.” The head reverted to human form. “There isn’t much time, for the enemy’s right behind us. Hordedev, help the humans.” His piece said, Anubis turned to his mother.

  “One moment,” Abadi called, but Qebera lost the conversation. He stood frozen at the boat’s reed rails. He stared dumbfounded toward the stern of the vessel, straight at the pilot now barely in the light.

  “Hordedev?” he whispered.

  “Father?”

  The god Anubis still faced Abadi who, though well out of reach, stood his ground. “We were sent here to help the goddess Isis. No one said anything about a goddess Nephthys or a god Anubis. I’ve never heard of you, by the way, so how do we know--”

  “You don’t, except that Thoth sent you here, and we are here. But, if you need our identities independently confirmed, the Setim in pursuit will likely oblige your needs. Perhaps you’d like to wait for them, have a bowl of tea in the meantime? We’d rather be elsewhere.”

  Abadi was Bedouin, immune to bullying by untrue gods. But, Qebera also knew him as a man of earthy sense. He knew when to back down. “They’re yours, Qebera,” he said as Anubis climbed back in the boat. “We’ll do this however you say. Qebera?”

  “Come along, mother,” Anubis said as he helped Nephthys along the deck. “It’s been a fine ride, but we have to switch transport.”

  “It wasn’t my fault...” Nephthys moaned.

  “Father?”

  “Hordedev!” Qebera stumbled aboard, rocking the boat. He stepped over Isis as if she weren't there, and around the other gods as he would around a mast. He collided with his son in a rough embrace. “Gods! I thought you were dead!”

  “I nearly was, on many occasions!” They traded good-natured punches, then each met the other’s eyes with love no man could express.

  “Do you mind?” Anubis boosted Nephthys over the rail. “I’d rather not do all the work.”

  Qebera and Hordedev supported Isis during their walk to camp. They used extra cloaks fetched by Naasir as wadded buffers against her power. The joy the men felt at their unexpected reunion dulled against concern for their former lord’s queen. Isis trembled between them. She swooned on unsteady feet, and couldn’t stop her wracking fit of sobs. “He’s gone,” she moaned over and over. “There’s nothing more I can do, he’s gone.” The goddess was devastated, spiritually and physically. Her condition distressed her two mortal escorts.

  “She isn’t well,” Qebera called to Sanni as soon as they arrived in camp. “She’s despondent, she’s exhausted, and look, Sanni. Look at her belly.”

  The men settled Isis onto a half-full pack. Only then did Sanni notice her son. True to her nature, she made no outburst. She only paused as she stooped before Isis, and her eyes pooled with tears. For a moment, she was speechless and had to force herself to breathe. Then she returned to the priorities before her, and smiled.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s a family reunion. After we take care of this, of course. Get her some water, Hordedev. Over there on that camel’s gear.” She watched him hurry away, then turned back to her husband. “It’s him? Gods, but Ra must cherish us this day.”

  “And he’ll cherish us more if we deal with this problem. Sanni, there’s something wrong with her. What do you think it is?”

  Sanni shrugged, and focused on Isis. “Well, obviously, she’s pregnant.”

  “Sanni, that’s impossible.”

  “Apparently not. And, she’s very far along. How far along are you, goddess?”

  No response. Sanni bent over to peer up the tunnel of hood that protected the men from Isis's face. The expression she found was dazed, as if Sanni's words meant nothing.

  “Well, far along, anyway. Of course she’s trembling, Qebera. Of course she seems befuddled. Pregnant, chased across Ra knows how much country by enemies determined to kill her? You’d be weak and befuddled, too.”

  Hordedev returned with a skin of water. Sanni took it from him and, without a beg of pardon, squeezed a stream of liquid over the goddess’s lips. Much of the water dribbled down Isis’s neck; the rest she lapped with surprising greed. Sanni pulled back the skin, then squinted at Isis. “Goddess, when did you eat last?”

  “Eat?” Isis said past her rain of tears, “I’ve no reason to eat.”

  “You do now. Hordedev, some food. Anything will do, but bread will expand in her belly. Go now, quickly.” Sanni nodded for Qebera’s help. Together they supported Isis as they led her to a camel. “You’ll ride with me, goddess. We’ll talk, and you’ll eat. I midwifed often beside you, back in old and better days. You were good with expectant mothers. I hope I can do as well.”

  The others had been busy. A stuporous Nephthys sat atop a kneeling camel, her son behind her to keep her in the saddle. Abadi and Naasir had finished the last of the loading and now bull
ied the camels into a rough formation. Sanni had only to mount and the caravan was ready to go. Qebera helped her onto her beast, and helped Isis in front of her. Hordedev came up as their camel stood, and handed Sanni an oilcloth full of bread and cheese.

  “Keep the cheese,” Sanni told him. “It’ll just upset her stomach. Right now, she needs something bland inside. It looks as if Abadi has prepared you a mount; go to it now. And you, Qebera, get to your horse. From what that fellow Anubis says, we can’t stay here much longer.”

  “Mother...” Hordedev said, but nothing more came out.

  “We’ll talk later, young man. You have a job to do just now.”

  They drove hard, covering four leagues over windswept dunes by midday. Sanni didn’t like the pace. She thought it too brisk for a pregnant woman. Still, she saw no alternative, so insistent was Anubis that Set followed behind. She worried over Isis, but reminded herself that the “woman” wasn’t a woman at all, but a much more resilient god. That might have been easier if Isis’s mental state had proven as robust as her body.

  The goddess muttered to herself, and burst into tears every few minutes, a terrible waste of water in the heart of the desert. She had only the most listless grasp of what went on about her, and would have fallen from her mount if Sanni hadn’t kept her safe. Whenever they stopped, Sanni urged her to eat and drink. She consoled her, but also lectured her. How could Isis carry a child and never eat or drink? Didn’t she realize the rigors of motherhood? Hadn’t she admonished hundreds, perhaps thousands of women to “eat for two” and keep their rest? Did she think the godhead a shield from her own advice?

  Sanni repeated these arguments often, hoping to break through grief to reach that goddess of bygone years. That goddess was one of wisdom and grace; she defined an eternal calm that succored mothers in uncertain birthings. She was not this befuddled crybaby in rank robes of blood-blackened wool sprayed with human innards. She was the heart of life. From time to time, that better goddess peeked at Sanni from behind the trembling fits. She appeared more frequently the more food she got, as the shakes lessened and her eyes refocused. In Sanni’s care, Isis recovered. The effort was great and the progress slow, but she recovered nonetheless.

  Nephthys received no such nurturing. Her doting son was her only comfort. As always through time, the humans ignored this lesser goddess.

  While Sanni nursed Isis and Anubis nursed Nephthys, the others kept watch from the dunes about their camps, looking for signs of the enemy sure to come. They spied the occasional jackal, and wondered if it, too, kept watch. Once, they thought they saw lions. But most times the desert lay empty, nothing moving but the blowing sand. At such times, the humans could retreat from fear, and Qebera and Hordedev could mend the rifts of time.

  “Do you still have it, father?” Hordedev asked as they crouched atop a dune. “The Wadjit Eye of Ra, do you still keep it safe?”

  Qebera patted his chest where the linen bag hung. The Wadjit Eye, for all its danger, was a less awkward subject than Hordedev's surgery under Anubis. “It’s never left me. Even when my faith was forgotten, when I hardly even remembered my home in Abydos, it hung here at my heart, a reminder of duty, if nothing else.”

  “And, what is your duty now, father? The quest has failed. Osiris is dead. Abydos no longer exists. What is there left to defend?”

  Qebera had no answer. He supposed he would get the goddesses to Thoth. There the immortals would continue their struggle, and in a thousand years or perhaps only ten they'd forget Qebera, his family, and all their other victims. Qebera supposed he would return to life in the clan. There was nothing left for him in Egypt; the gods in their combat had seen to that. He frowned at his thoughts, and Hordedev frowned with him.

  “Let’s go,” Qebera said. “In ten or twelve hours, we could be in Fayum.”

  The weather turned threatening as they approached their next rest. The sky to the east blackened. It flashed with lightning, then tumbled toward them as if to strike them down.

  “A storm,” Abadi said as they all watched over their shoulders. "And I hope that's all it is."

  “No,” Anubis shouted from the lead. “As a Bedouin, you should know that most storms come from the west. And look at all that lightning, and the air with so little moisture. It’s a storm of static, a sand storm, most likely, and it’s coming straight from Set.”

  Qebera glanced at Hordedev as they rode along together. He nodded toward Anubis.

  Hordedev shrugged. “He’s somewhat of a scientist.”

  Ahead, a limestone finger jutted twenty cubits out of the sand, a solitary scar in the otherwise fluid landscape. The Bedouins called it The Rock. It needed no more descriptive a name since it stood alone for three leagues in any direction. It offered protection from the elements, though no water to drink. They stopped inside its base, a kind of three-sided corral of jagged stone, and dismounted their beasts.

  Abadi watched the storm. “It’s definitely coming our way.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Qebera mused. “If he knows we’re here, why the big display? He could concentrate power and send it right to us. Spread out over ten leagues, this attack will be weak by comparison.”

  Anubis settled Nephthys onto the ground, nestling her into a corner of rock. “He doesn’t know where we are, but he has a fair idea. And, yes, his power is more than enough to thrash the skin from our bones.” He joined Qebera and Abadi at the eastern wall of the stone box. “This is the way Set is, how he deals with frustration. He lashes out in fits and just as suddenly forgets his purpose. His attack will be violent, but brief.”

  “Can we survive it?” Qebera asked.

  Anubis shrugged. “The goddesses and I will survive it, I suppose. For an immortal, though, getting flayed alive carries special concerns. You humans are lucky; you’ll be dead in minutes.”

  “Then we move on,” Abadi decided. “The Fayum isn’t seven leagues from here.”

  Qebera shook his head. “Look at that thing. It’ll be here in minutes. If we leave, we’ll be caught in open desert. Here, at least, we have shelter.”

  They watched the approaching storm, dread rising within them as blackness rose in the sky. Hordedev and Naasir joined them, looking concerned at their elders’ indecision.

  “What do we do?” Hordedev finally asked.

  Qebera’s mouth was a thin line of stress. Like everyone else, he expected some answer. Then he realized he expected it from Anubis, who was as silent as the mortals. Qebera turned to that puzzle of a god. The next words he spoke were dangerous, but understandable considering their plight. “We’ve three gods here. What are you going to do for us?”

  The god only shrugged, and rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, I’m sorry to say. See, we gods have our natures and can’t go beyond them. This, in case you’re wondering, is far beyond me.”

  Qebera frowned, but respected Anubis immediately. A god who admitted weakness; this was the son of Osiris.

  “Isis could sustain us all," Anubis continued, "but not without being obvious, and therefore drawing more force down upon us.”

  It was Abadi’s turn to frown. “I don’t think that’s a worry. Your goddess is worthless in her present state. What about the other one?”

  They all glanced from face to face, but no one looked toward Nephthys. Qebera realized his gods were useless, that he'd have to fend for himself and his people.

  “What about the Wadjit Eye?” Sanni yelled from behind them. She tended to Isis on the far side of the box.

  Startled, Qebera grabbed the pouch that had hung so long at his chest. He turned to Anubis and found the god with his mouth hanging open.

  “Well, you’ve used it against the Setim twice,” Sanni added. “Doesn’t it have any other tricks?”

  Qebera stared at Anubis, his eyes asking the same question.

  Anubis licked his lips. “It’s Ra’s power on earth. And I forgot all about it.”

  “Can it save us?” Qebera asked. A wind teased the folds of his clo
thing. “Can it?”

  “Nothing stands against the power of Ra.” Anubis scanned the surrounding faces. “If you know how to use it.”

  Continued stares. Intense silence. Anubis just stood there.

  Qebera felt static on the hairs of his face. “Well?” he asked, trying not to shout at the god.

  “Well, what?”

  “Can you control it, or can’t you?”

  Anubis scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I guess the principles are fairly straightforward. I mean, the energies--” He stopped at their expressions and rethought his approach. “Yes, I suppose I can.”

  “All right,” Qebera shouted, turning away from the looming storm. “We have a solution. Abadi, our god may yet make mistakes. We need shelter, and quickly.”

  Abadi drew his knife and hurried toward the camels. “Naasir! Hordedev! Come on, we haven’t much time!”

  Qebera hauled out his pouch, ragged linen protruding from its innards. He whipped its cord from about his neck and gave the thing to Anubis. He then stepped away to help the others.

  “I’m not really sure I can do this,” Anubis said.

  Qebera arrested his sprint to the camels and plodded back upwind to the god. Such a strange creature, he thought. Qebera had never known an infant god. It unnerved him to see how unsure of themselves the kings of nature could be. Then he recalled a moment from the past, from a past buried and as unreal as legend. Hordedev had been ten, his voice still high, and Qebera had given him a field to manage... “That’s all right," he said to Anubis. "Just do your best-- No!” Anubis had begun to pull open the pouch. “Not now! You’ll kill us all!”

  “Sorry.”

  Shaken, Qebera backed toward the others. The camels were unburdened, their hobbles still in place. Now the slaughter began, with sharp flint blades opening thick necks while the butchers stepped away to avoid the spray of blood. One by one, the camels crashed to the ground, their deaths ungraceful, messy and loud. Then the men completed the butchery, hacking open bodies and tearing out entrails.