Deka’s thoughts trained on the assistant’s words. Is Raem in such misery he’s becoming a wolf in front of them? He told me once not so many had seen it since he was a youth… that he had learned to control it. Poor man. She pushed further into the tent and heard the doggish whine of pain. The men had finished with the tiny linen sutures and applied a wound gel of rendered fat and herbal infusion to his arm and chest.
“Finished?” her voice snapped as they wrapped his wounds. She made no attempt to soften her voice or to sound less anxious.
“We’ve done what we can. He no longer bleeds, but we expect there will be a fever and madness that follows it in a day or two. He could not possibly survive once the fire reaches his noble heart. We will come then to give him draughts for his misery and to pray with you. It is in the hands of the gods,” the physician did not make eye contact with her. She sensed he was humiliated that his best medicine could not save his prince.
“Go, then.” She drew herself as tall as she could, then pushed in to kneel at Maatkare’s bedside.
When the men reluctantly left, Deka took up his left hand, careful not to disturb the bandaged part, kissed it and then licked his fingertips. She wanted him to suddenly rally, seize her, and possess her for hours but she knew he was too weak and ill. She didn’t understand why his mighty sense of self-preservation or self-healing had abandoned him as he lay before her. He had never shown less than perfection to her.
“Beloved.” She ordered.
His head thrashed and wagged on the pillow.
“Look into my eyes. See me. Look at me.”
He panted, but then stilled for a moment to open one wildly darting eye. He pushed her away with his good right hand. “Go. Go away,” he mouthed.
“No, beloved,” she whispered gently. “You woke my heart with your power and made it rich when you punished the men. I have to give you a deeper awakening now and I tell you that you must live to triumph,” Deka kissed his lower lip, taking it gently in her teeth and tugging it with a playful nip.
The heart remembers a long ago ascent.
The voices in her thoughts whispered.
“I know it burns, my love, but you opened me to power and I return it to you tenfold,” her voice trembled with awe. She clutched his hand and clapped it to her cheek, then sank to him with a whisper. “Be at peace with it. Seize it as you needed me to do it not so long ago. Taste it.”
The prince’s eyes darted in animal panic for a moment, fixed on her, and glared. A sharp, green-gold light emitted from them. When he growled, she froze for an instant, confused. His eyes were different than they should have been. The aura of the wild, black wolf-hound should have left him after he battled. Even though his glance set her into a momentary panic, something in her heart thrilled at the look in his eyes. She’d seen that look in his eyes long ago… even before the children had crafted the knife and long before they had even met.
“I know you,” he whispered.
“I know.” She replied.
The first day after the hunt, almost as soon as he regained his senses, Maatkare demanded large quantities of beer be brought to him so he could slake his thirst. By the second day, he tried to drink himself to stupefaction. Each time refreshment was brought to him, he quaffed it heartily. Then, his guts cramped and nausea sent him sprawling to vomit with such force that his wounds began to seep again. He staggered back to his couch, weak and ill, then lay panting and gasping for long moments. It appeared to anyone who saw him that every part of his body ached and trembled like a demonic spirit had infected it.
His vizier brought the physician back to look at him several times each day. The men zealously changed the dressing and reapplied the gels to the stitched places to keep the thread moist, often making note that the gouges from the lion’s claws were not as deep as they first expected.
Deka overheard them exclaim that she must have worked some kind of sekhem on his wounds.
“In a few days the threads will be clipped and you will be fit to command again, Your Highness. “I’ve taken great care so that you should have very little in the way of a scar by the time another year has passed. The gods have blessed you, truly!”
“No! Not good enough!” the prince screamed and cursed them. She listened, almost helplessly from her side of the tent, as he ordered them to apply more oils and bandages. He drank until he stumbled and careened around his side nearly senseless. When Deka tried to go to him, he bellowed: “You! You know something. I can feel it. You know I must be without flaw if I am to rule! No scars! No marks! And you think you have rights with me? I’ll show you. You are now to be on the other side of camp. If I see your wicked face…” he screeched drunkenly, then lurched to the opening of the tent and ordered men to begin detaching her tent room.
“Raem…” she protested.
“Your Highness,” he corrected, starting to slur his words from the drink and the rising fever. “You don’t like your place under my heel then you just go running back to your Akkad devils and see if they will even want to take you back. I’m done with you!”
“He doesn’t mean it,” she repeated almost silently to herself, but secretly she wasn’t sure. How could he bring me in and then just cast me out? How could he wake me inside and not expect that I can also turn on him with a fierceness which will give him sorrow?
For the remainder of the day, she shot arrows, worked beads, and dreaded being alone with her increasingly volatile thoughts. If Marai or that old man did this to show me I made a bad choice, they will pay! Then, she felt the uneasiness of nausea and remembered her child. He has to care about me. It was a sleepless night in both tents.
By the third day, Maatkare’s guts had turned to water in addition to the black vomit, and his fever began to rage.
Deka heard the concern in the camp and ventured close to the royal tent but didn’t dare go in.
“It is as I feared,” the physician exited, shaking his neatly shaved head. “He has black water fever.”
“Lie… he tells lies…” Deka heard Maatkare squall in the distance. “He’s tryna kill me, Nefira… I know you are out there listening to this ugly bastard. You know there was no pond out in the field for me to drink. You know…”
“Beloved.” She tried, standing just outside. “Calm yourself. Let me help.”
“No. I will not see you like this. I cannot see you.” His voice came back deeply despondent.
“I will heal you.”
“No. You will not. Go Away. Go to your Akkad husband. I don’t want you, sorceress.”
He doesn’t mean it, she sobbed inwardly.
In another day, dark, angry streaks moved into his armpit. His arm and chest, which had been healing well, developed an odor and grew septic. The physicians washed the wounds again and again, putting ash and honey salve under clean bandages several times a day. At last, Maatkare ordered the physicians to bring him no food or drink. He knew healing from his own studies and decided to sweat out the wound poison with only manna paste to help lower his fever. When it abated, he huddled under skins and shivered violently. The wounds had fewer odors but were bright red and some which had not been sewn opened and had begun to weep pus.
After pointless hours of his trying to bring the trembling fits under control and the sight of the foaming drool that occasionally spewed forth from his lips, along with the vile and hearty curses, the physician convinced him he would die soon. He relented, but didn’t want to die alone any more.
“Nefira…” he forgot his vanity and demanded her company, in several soul wrenching screams.
When the grooms fetched her, Deka quickly gathered her things and followed them to the royal tent.
If my Raem is dying, I need to go to him. I need to try, even if he fights me, she decided, but couldn’t avoid noticing the reactions of the men as she moved. They stared and many of them avoided her as she walked, she knew she had lost any friends she may have made in the camp. Men who had once respected and admired her now whispered: �
�She has cursed his Highness.”
It was a long walk. She heard enough whispering as she moved through the camp that she wanted to rise above it like a fantastic winged serpent and ravage it, but she contained herself.
Fools. They don’t know who I am. Raem, poor, poor Raem you must not know what I have recently learned of myself either. They whisper about me. They must be punished. Ah, but you taught me they are lesser creatures, not worthy of a spell or even a gentle reminder of their rudeness.
“What are you saying,” she paused by one man. “I hear what you are thinking.”
His response was the same as the rest of the men in the camp. He showed veiled fear and handled an amulet to ward off any curse she might hurl at him. She hated when they whispered, because she always knew it was about her and she wanted to retaliate; to raise her hand and cause a headache, stumbling, or a momentary blindness. Tonight, she knew she couldn’t be distracted by those thoughts.
For the past three nights, she hadn’t tried to seek Marai or the curious men in the riverside town. She hadn’t wanted to seek any advice from Wise MaMa or Naibe. She just wanted her beloved to be well, but every hour he seemed to worsen. She meditated on all of the sensations of the land to see if there was an answer from her forgotten past, but only received the image of herself striding above the earth as if walking on air and among many men with her beloved at her side. It was like the song she had always chanted.
He has to live! I want my vision to live!
She overheard the men murmur about the lion hunt from time to time. What they witnessed had been nothing less than stunning. Tonight, as she crossed the camp, their whispers poured through her thoughts. Each group of men turned their heads to watch, and for a moment she thought they might come to accuse her.
“He transformed into the wolf the moment the lion leaped on him.”
“So fast. No time for a spell to take hold!”
Another group argued: “He killed the lion, but he killed Wuenre, his captain? I think he did it before, to draw the lion, then ended the poor man’s pain.”
“No, it was after they were attacked. He killed with the magical knife that woman gave him.”
“No, no you didn’t see anything in the dark from where you were standing. You were with the ones fighting the torch fires that got into the grass. How could you see a cursed thing? I saw Highness change and bite both of them, then eat their hearts and lungs. Poor Wuenre did not deserve… Shh… here she comes…”
A third gathering was accusing their leader of murder.
“They were having words. Highness was shouting at Wuenre about slacking his duty right before. I think he was pushed in front of that beast.”
“He became Wepwawet. That much I know.”
“No, it had to be a demon. Once the lion was down, the god should have left him.”
Deka sensed from everything the men whispered that once they realized the lion was no longer a threat, they were still afraid to approach the prince in his wolf form. He had growled, snarled, and threatened anyone who tried to approach or to stop the grisly feast until he had fainted with delight and lay, fully in the shape of a man once more. They had carried him back to the camp and fled to their tents, hoping everything about that day and night had been some kind of illusion or dream.
“It’s that woman. Shh. There…”
Deka felt their opinions shift as she passed the physician speaking quietly to his own group of men. Bowing her head, she sharpened her own sense of hearing.
“She’s done this to him. He should have left all three of those women home and taken the locals, but he got proud. Could he not see they were adepts in some worship? The one he calls for is from the goddess race. She caused him to form as a wolf. I saw it once when I came by the tent as they were in pleasure.”
She paused in her step, about to speak, or fly over to the man and slap him, but decided to listen to the next man disagree in his defense.
“No, he has always wolf-like… Remember he is a priest of Wepwawet and I heard he has a good gift over the animal within. This is just a natural progression of things. He has finally gone too far by eating the raw flesh of his kill.”
It’s making him sick, though Deka thought. If I don’t help him it just might make him mad. How can he rule all of Kemet in such an uncontrolled state? He sweats and gnashes human teeth while he lies on his bed. It isn’t a shape shift, he suffers.
Deka nodded to the guards who brought her, dismissing them; a cryptic smile dotting her lips as she went inside the tent.
I know what this is. The last of his old nature is at odds with the new. If he fights it too hard, he will die. I have seen this before somewhere in a dream. Did my Ta-Te endure this? Is this what I recall? She looked at the cups of beer and medication that lined the table where the box containing the Children of Stone had been sitting. It had been moved to the trunk again. She sensed it had not been opened since she placed the cleaned dagger inside it. Before the physician left, he had refilled the brazier with herbs that made a calming, sweet smoke and placed several malachite scarabs at the prince’s throat for protection against evil spirits because it was well known by healers that shadow demons could easily enter him in his weakened state. She sat by Maatkare’s bed and grasped his hand in hers to calm him, then set his headrest aside. After she eased plump pillows under his head so he lay with his head slightly above his bandaged chest, she held him, kissed his hands, and pressed them to her cheeks.
He’s so weak and trembly now, she paused, thinking: Children of Stone. I’ll use them the way Marai used them on young Djee. Certainly my beloved is worth it to the gods; worth more than an ignorant peasant boy. He is at least worth it to me.
She started to get up to fetch the box of stones, but the prince seized her hand and pulled her down to him. His sudden display of might startled her so much that she sprawled over him. She kissed his upper chest above the wrappings, then looked earnestly into his face.
“The knife. Take it from me,” he muttered hoarsely, then he realized he no longer gripped it. He remembered she had taken it and cleaned it the first night.
“It’s in the box where they made it for you. Do you want to hold it?” she sought the expression in his eyes, gladdened that they had calmed and that he had recognized her.
“No. No. Don’t get up, don’t get up. Stay. I heard your thought, Nefira, that you said I am worth… augh, why am I to be marked like this?” his eyes were shot with horror at his own potential ugliness, but then Deka saw them fill with desire for her. His hand walked up her arm, then pulled her close so he could whisper. “Why does it burn?” he gasped. “I can feel a spectral poison burning inside me like curse. It never responds to my cleansing words, but keeps burning me.”
“I know. I know. Shhh… shhh…” Deka consoled, her fingertips moving over his brow. “Yes, it burns in my heart too, my love. You gave me the taste and I accepted it. Can you not rise up higher yet because what’s inside us calls to you?”
“Then you admit you did this to me, sorceress,” his eerie laughter started as a low titter, then grew into a faint, but hideous cackle as he pressed her so close she could barely breathe.
She knew he understood, then raised up in a slight struggle to find his mouth so she could kiss him again and again. Deka’s lips moved to his flickering eyelids and eased his fever for a few moments before his hunger for her rallied. Waves of passion started to course through him, but faltered.
“I did not cause this, beloved. I did not bring the lion to you, but I can heal you.” Her lips made a fervent whisper next to his ear. She leaned into him, careful to balance so that she didn’t hurt his wounds, then let him take her.
“Drink deep of my spirit,” she spoke directly, then kissed his mouth in a deep kiss to give him all of the sensual energy he needed begin to heal himself. Soon, she had grown so weak with pleasure that she collapsed and lay her head on his bound chest, then gasped in delight that there was no strength of any kind left in h
er. It felt good to be depleted that way; to have given everything.
Her slim hand wandered to the box on the trunk and flipped it open. She closed her fingers on a stone by the way it felt and then held it up so they both could see it. It was the green malachite stone that had a deep olive undertone like eastern jades. It matched his eyes far more than the teal green scarab amulets perched at his throat. Deka took those away and set them on the table beside the box, then reverently kissed the stone. She touched it to her own brow where her blood red stone pulsed faintly, then put it to his lips, watching him become still as he studied its glimmer.
“Oh. You found the very one…”
She felt him sigh beneath her in a much stronger passion.
“Y-you want this one?” she gasped because she understood what this meant. “Inside, the way I have one?”
His hands tensed in a slight spasm. Prince Maatkare followed her hand up to his brow as she placed the stone there.
She felt the Child Stone sigh as if it had come back to a place it had always belonged.
The prince nodded, but whined in a little surprise as the green stone sank into him. He shut his eyes in an ecstatic gasp. “It’s beautiful…” he faintly cried. “Beautiful… I can see… everything so clearly.”
When he opened his eyes Deka saw that they glittered slightly.
He’s already learning, she thought, and this has happened before in my dreams. She had seen the same wildness of heart that she saw in Maatkare. Some vague part of her memory stirred at the way he had raved. Somewhere in time, so long ago, someone else had transformed, but it hadn’t been into a wolf. It had been seamless and flawless, unlike this evening. Her Maatkare had asked for the Child Stone, and had received it well, it seemed that the Children had agreed to translate him into a god; a real one – into Wepwawet, the Opener of the Way to the other gods.
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