Going Forth By Day

by Mary R Woldering

  “You Highness…” one of the men said, hesitating, “something’s not right about the water.”

  Marai knew the man sensed the same foreboding. He tried to read the inspector’s expression as his voice sang a portion of the Sekhmet Hymn Marai had learned at Hordjedtef’s feet. The words rose just above a whisper, so only the men rowing in front would hear.

  Bast, beloved, when your people call.

  Daughter of the sun, with flame and fury

  Flashing from the prow upon the foe;

  Safely sails the boat with your protection

  Passing scatheless where your fires glow.

  Tonight, something about the song caused a pause in the air, as if the dark thing that watched them listened to it.

  Marai started to sing. “Bast beloved…”

  “No, not you… too much force in your voice,” Wserkaf turned, singing again to encourage the men as they continually probed the depths and pushed back to avoid any silt.

  Marai wearily shut his eyes and visualized the water rolling by. “There really is something…” Marai spoke quietly, hoping the men, who had continued to sing a little of the hymn in the form of a rowing cadence, wouldn’t hear them.

  “It’s pulling you, isn’t it?” Wserkaf said.

  That suggestion was all the big man needed. He laid his oar in the hull of the boat and crawled on his hands and knees over the front rowers’ bench to the prow. Leaning over the edge of the boat a little, he let his hand glide in the water. As Marai reveled in the feel of the warmth of the churning water rushing through his fingers, he knew Naibe’s hand had done the same thing long ago. He felt the vague link of sensual feeling, as if his hand had become her young and smooth hand in the water. Tonight it was faint; so very little of her essence remained in the water.

  Marai felt the dark spirit as it gathered itself into physical form. Hunger. I sense it coming closer now. Unnatural hunger… the silt ridge over there. It comes to us, leading others. Crocodiles massing for a feed. In little Kina-Ahna, his apartment was far from the murky shore. He had heard they were a problem in the flood shanties at night, but had not himself encountered one alive or unbound.

  “Do crocodiles normally attack boats?” he asked innocently, still warily swirling the water with his hand.

  “Not in a fat year like this,” the rudder man called up to Marai, “not unless something tempts them.”

  “Oh,” Marai mused, knowing the rudder man hadn’t sensed the uneasiness take shape. “I see. Wserkaf, friend…” he called just above a whisper, “put your hand in the water and see if you can feel what I do” he turned to the priest, about to say Hordjedtef must have discovered he was alive.

  “Damn! Get your hand out of the water! Someone is casting a powerful spell and boosting its power through my wdjat,” the inspector priest fell on Marai, grabbing his hand from the river. “Those monsters have become demons! They’ll come through the bottom after us.”

  Marai’s heart leapt as if touched by lightning. He sensed the image of someone seated at a still pool of water. A finger balanced on a roundel of crystal carved with a gold and blue eye in his other hand and floated it. Marai knew both Hordjedtef and the inspector knew the trick of gliding it on the water. Other priests had at least seen them use it in that manner. That meant Hordjedtef might have found and kept the wdjat. The sojourner excitedly sucked in his breath, shut his eyes, and rocked back and forth on his heels to calm himself. It didn’t matter who was steering the animals, part of him wanted to leap from the boat into the water to control the approaching beasts. Every wavelet he saw jiggled and produced a dark and gliding shape that broke the surface.

  “Wrath of the Devourer!” Wserkaf grunted and leapt to his feet so violently that he nearly threw himself overboard. He seized Marai’s discarded oar like a cudgel.

  One of the rowers grabbed the torch that had been fixed in the forward keel and waved it about. He cursed in terror as the light illuminated dozens of eyes perched behind wet, slim snouts.

  A larger crocodile moved closer to the boat, its mouth yawning open, as if inviting any one of the five in the boat to make a foolish move.

  Through his own hammering heart, Wserkaf realized the hisses and growls he thought the great reptiles were making were instead coming from Marai’s throat. Looking over his right shoulder for just an instant, he saw the Child Stone shining on the big man’s forehead. A silvery jewel-like thing the size of an almond emerged from the sojourner’s forehead. The shape blinked out just as quickly, followed by a shimmering cascade of light down the man’s arms. For an instant, Marai’s copper-skinned face turned entirely black, but a white glow encased him like a smooth hide; the image of Bakha Montu, the black-faced white bull, returned.

  Paralyzed in dark fascination as Marai leapt effortlessly from being a man to becoming a bull creature with god-like power over animals, Wserkaf watched Marai edge further forward in the boat to touch the snout of the lead crocodile.

  Wserkaf heard the layers of Marai’s language, translated into shared silent thought; a remnant of the hours of linking they had shared.

  You will not eat us

  Our flesh is poison to you.

  One who has called you to

  come to us

  Taunts you with hunger

  Free us

  Show us where the deep and cool water is,

  That we may leave you.

  to a lame calf and more to eat

  on another shoal

  More weak things to cull.

  The lead crocodile stopped hissing and closed its gaping mouth, puzzled at the being who spoke its own language.

  Wserkaf was aghast. He never imagined Marai would have the spiritual discipline to control wild water animals, especially when he suspected they were being compelled by heka.

  Suddenly, the steersman began to point.

  “Look Your Highness, little lights!”

  Little balls of glimmer that looked like fireflies began to spin and swirl just above the surface of the water, illuminating the ripples just a little more. Then, just when the crocodiles had become most threatening, they moved into a strange formation that made an almost diagonal line in the direction of the opposite shore. The sliver of moon showed only eddies of water swirling over the silt-bars to the right and left.

  Marai’s laugh began long and low because he knew that his thoughts and the energy of the few Stone Children he harbored in the leather purse on his belt had combined for a few miraculous moments.

  The Children welcomed him once again. Their spirit-light laughingly jostled part of the bag open, so their orbs of bliss could soar up and lead the crocodiles out to a deeper channel.

  As soon as the boat had steered past the threat of the beasts, Marai and Wserkaf sat down again to help with the rowing. The men wouldn’t put oars in the water at first. They weren’t at all convinced the beasts wouldn’t come back. As if he agreed, the steersman, too, withdrew the rudder oar.

  Marai. Now what? Wserkaf asked silently. We have that they will forget, but now they are too worried to even go.

  This time the big man gestured to the steersman but included the words.

  “You were testing the boat as his Highness requested, ready to take him to the palace of the king. Now you need to moor it and rest… your friends will rest” Marai finished with a salute-like gesture, then watched as the men finished the crossing in a daze and eased the small boat up to the mooring post.

  Before the three boatmen lashed the keel to a post Marai had moved away from them and had begun to stride rapidly in the direction of his old Little Kina-Ahna neighborhood.

  “You will wait here. I will return as soon as I can. Be ready to leave,” Wserkaf told the men and darted after the tall, cloaked figure that seemed to be increasing in speed with each step he took. As he chased the man he thought: this heka with the crocodiles was done by someone who knows how to use the wdjat other than myself. Hordjedtef should be the only one who knows the use of it. Did he k
eep it and lie to me to draw me out?

  Marai paused in mid-stride, then turned back toward the inspector. “You saw through our memory link, Highness. My Ari and her things were both taken away the night of the Sending Forth celebration. You know Great One…” he started, but Wserkaf stopped him as he gained even step. Marai didn’t want to think about that, but a different possibility taunted him. Great One had, by his own admission, treated the amulet like mere jewelry until he realized there was more to it than its mysterious composition. His interest had increased after Wserkaf had discovered the energy wielding capabilities and some other newer uses.

  “He probably found it in Lady Ariennu’s things while she was dallying with Maatkare,” the inspector mused, then noticed he was alone again.

  Marai had stopped in the middle of the empty market, arms outstretched and turning around a couple of times. In order to get a sense of everything that had changed since he left, he sat at the common well in the center of the open area.

  The plaza was empty this very early morning. Fewer stationary stalls dotted the edges of the dwellings because many of the regulars had moved back to their dry season homes to work the fields. Marai knew Etum-Addi and his family were gone. The heavy-set, jolly man who liked to break into song almost as much as he did had essentially been banished just for knowing him. He sensed the family wasn’t in ruins; they simply moved their business to the coast earlier than they expected. There, in time, they would finally know a little bit of longed-for prosperity.

  Deka his thoughts whispered next as he sat by the well, knowing that somehow the woman of Ta-Seti had been inspired to betray everyone. She had met him at this well on a night much like this. It had been the night right before things fell apart. She had almost let him touch her heart. Because of the manipulations of the Great One of Five and his minions, those moments, too, were gone.

  The sojourner beckoned for Wserkaf to sit with him to catch his breath before he headed back to his boat. It would be a farewell, both men knew that. Even though there was still so much more to know, slowing time that much was impossible, even for a god in the body of a man.

  As the inspector sat with the big man, he began to sort through his own memories of the day he first stumbled into the rest of his own life. That had been near this well too. The gods must be amused, the inspector thought. Looking up, as Marai did, to the single high, large window, he thought of the beautiful but haunted-looking woman of Ta-Seti who sat there during his visit months ago. He felt Marai’s soul calling out to her as they sat quietly.

  Deka… Marai breathed again. Maybe I could speak to you now… break this prince’s spell on you with my devotion, even though we never touched as man and bride. If there’s a shred of energy… he patted the bag of stones and stared up at the window. A low lamp burned on the wide ledge of ‘Deka’s Window’. Someone else lives here then. If it’s Djerah, that would be uncommon luck for me and a change for his family. Now that the child is older and Houra as well as Etum Addi is gone, I would think they would have returned to the worker’s village.

  Just then, the two resting men were distracted by whispers. Two lovers met, near an alley, then slipped into darkness.

  “Eh” Wserkaf nudged Marai a little. “See that? Life goes on around us.”

  The sojourner laughed a little. Ari, I remember us… how you waited to trick me one night out here like this. You were so free and full of joy, he mused. Now, who knows? I’ll come and set things right for good. We’ll be together again. I have to think that or I’ll go mad. Marai knew Wserkaf was already thinking about what kind of separate future lay ahead for each of them. It was well past time. He slapped his knee, about to stand. For now, he knew he would have to sneak up the steps and past the door to his old apartment, and whoever lived there, in order to get to the roof. There, he could sleep for a few hours before trying to find where Djerah lived or slipping up the river alone. The peacekeepers would be alerted before too long, and he still needed to avoid them. With all of the spiritual energy he had employed to slow time, access memory, defeat enchanted crocodiles, and complete his physical recovery Marai worried about falling into another unprotected sleep. He would have to find a better place than an open roof. Still unable to put it from his mind, he tried to sense something more about the women by gently stroking the purse at his belt.

  Little Ones

  See your own,

  where they are

  Inspire them to speak to me

  he thought. The voices answered only where Marai could sense them:

  Some things have come to you,

  Gentle Man of Ai…

  But trial is needed.

  Some of us suffer in our chosen flesh

  Yet not more than we can bear.

  Come to us,

  but not in haste.

  With haste, destruction is certain.

  Wserkaf scanned the eastern sky again. He wanted to wait a little longer before rejoining his princely life, but knew he couldn’t. The water birds were starting a noise, marking the last hour or so before dawn. The sun might break the horizon before he completed crossing the river. The procession to the ibu would have begun. It would be unforgiveable.

  “Don’t worry about the time, Highness, I think I can do one more loop.” Marai looked up once and patted the bag of Child Stones again. The birds fell silent as if they had never begun their morning noises. The grey of the earliest light darkened. “Don’t worry about me either. I will see you again. That’s certain. Just follow the truth and uncover the secrets while I’m getting my ladies and doing what I know I’ll have to do if this Prince Maatkare has other ideas.”

  “Maatkare Raemkai is an animal…” Wserkaf scoffed under his breath, then followed up with a gasp as he noticed the sudden backward jaunt of time. Wha… the inspector gasped internally, turning the god Kephri? I can’t think of this now. “You’ll kill yourself if you don’t keep that in check,” Wserkaf worried, “I’ll be sending you all the protection I can muster, but I can’t hide things like that. Try not to make it too hard for me. But on the subject of Maatkare, Great One called him a howling wild dog’s bastard, even though his own daughter was the man’s mother. He named him for strong and true Ra, but later said he should have named him for Wepwawet instead, because he might guide the king but he had made it evident he could never be king unless he stole the crown. Although he could be the king, whether or not he deserved it, if the situation was right. I could even be king…” At that moment, Wserkaf realized a different truth. Putting his hand to his face, he gaped in shock. “Well, then, I said that didn’t I? Legends be damned. Myths too…”

  Marai turned his attention to his companion at the sudden reaction.

  “Maybe Hordjedtef never was my friend,” the inspector shook his head, dismayed. I wanted to think he saw promise in me because he took me into tutelage as a youth, but now I see he merely wanted to control and direct me according to his own plan after he had gone into the West.”

  “You hadn’t realized that yet?” Marai almost chided the inspector, but saw that the jest was not well received. “We already talked of why I had to be destroyed… and why my ladies had to be scattered. So… legends?”

  “I know you knew of the prediction of Great Djedi. You told it to me the first day we met.” Wserkaf shut his eyes, hoping that the reversal of hours might reverse his weariness. “My mother Princess Neferhetepes was alternately called Redjeddet to mesh with the legend. It was a joke. There was supposed to be a box of Ways and Numbers that only she could open. It had the secrets of Djehuti with the so-called emerald, crystal, and lapis tablets which had been hidden long ago in the chart room at Per-A-At, away from unschooled eyes.”

  Marai listened, but stared into the well, distracted again. The black water swirled before his eyes. He didn’t understand why he could see it moving since the level of the water was too low to pick up even a strong breeze. The early morning was dead calm.

  “Some of it has to be true. The Children
were bringing me here to find Great Djedi and to unlock something. They gifted us so we could do that. Maybe your disbelief in the legend was also part of the plan. “So, what do you think of this prediction and of the Great Djedi now, if you don’t believe it?”

  “The Great Djedi was magnificent, but what most know about him has been twisted into fictions and legend.” Wse began again. “You would think, in listening to Hordjedtef tell of the Djedi, that he found some random wandering magician on one of his campaigns. The truth was nothing like that. Djedi was a cousin of Sneferu, who was Khufu’s father. He had great powers and wisdom, so Great One fetched him to impress his father – to raise his standing. I believe the old man let himself be manipulated by my senior because he thought that exposing him to the Laws of Maat in action might improve him and make a better scholar of him. He must have thought it would help my senior rule his own ill temper over losing his bid for the throne. That he would be the wisest man, thus mightier than any king. The Box in the legend was nothing really. I’ve seen it. My father showed me the box before I broke ties with him,” the Inspector muttered again, almost in despair. “There are just some scrolls and tablets with compilations of numbers and theorems. Much of it is in my chart room. I’ve worked on them in secret from time to time. That water wheel at my house came to me after a night of contemplating their knowledge. There are star walking spells as well. I think there’s more hidden at the Temple of Ra in Per-A-At, but my father and I haven’t been close since my mother died. I only recently made amends with him.”

  See us

  The voice of the children whispered behind the big man’s brow as he considered the story.