by Andrew Linke
Oliver nodded and returned to the wrecked Range Rover long enough to grab his backpack and slip it on. He picked up his phone from where it had fallen on the bullet-riddled floor. It showed one bar of signal, but no reply to his tweet to Amber. He slipped the phone into a pocket of his vest and rejoined the guards.
They marched up the narrow path. Zaid walked in the front with Oliver behind him and the still unnamed guard taking up the rear. It didn’t take long for them to catch up with the old woman and her young assistant, who introduced herself to Oliver as Hadiya.
“You speak English very well, Hadiya.” Oliver commented between panting breaths as they marched up the steep incline.
“Thank you. I participated in a student exchange program in New York for two years while I attended university.”
“What did you study?”
“The closest equivalent in English would be something like Women’s Rights in International Relations.”
“That’s very modern.”
Hadiya shot Oliver a sharp look. Her dark eyes cut into him and he had the distinct impression that he had offended her.
“I might be from a small village, but we aren’t some backwards tribe scrabbling in the dust of your modern empire, you know. We have electricity. We have medicine. I was encouraged by my parents to attend university so I could get a bigger picture of the world. I did well there, then returned to the village out of respect for my family’s honor and my grandmother’s beliefs.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Oh really?”
“Certainly, Hadiya. All I meant was that your choice of major reflects an interest in society that many people lack, no matter where they come from.”
She looked away from Oliver and appeared to consider this for a few minutes as she helped the old woman, who Oliver now assumed to be Hadiya’s grandmother, keep her balance on the steep path.
Eventually she said, “I apologize for snapping at you. My grandmother appears to trust you, so I will try to do the same.”
“And I apologize for bringing trouble to your people. Can you tell me more about yourselves? For starters, how do you know of Sephor and his estate?”
“My family are the leaders of a village several kilometers southeast of this place. For over a hundred generations the women of our line have been priestesses and chief elders, while their husbands and sons served as defenders of the people.”
“A matriarchal society here in Egypt. One that has persisted for over a thousand years. That’s interesting.” Oliver commented.
“Yes. Well, we believe ourselves to be descended from the wife and servants of Sephor, those few who escaped a terrible slaughter. For the most part we live as you might expect any other small village centered around an oasis. We grow crops. We raise animals. We pray that the spring does not fail. We never grew large enough to concern the Pharaohs, or Caliphs, or Generals, because our Elder women always reminded us of Sephor and how he grew too proud until one day his pride destroyed him.”
“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your village ever sold the secret of the estate to an archaeologist or grave robber. That nobody ever attempted to plunder Sephor’s house for riches.”
“Some did. Those we caught were executed for blasphemy. Those we did not were never seen again. The guardians of the estate saw to that.”
“The undead skeletons.”
Hadiya thought about that, then nodded. “Yes. I suppose so. I have never seen them myself, thank God, but my mother would tell me stories of walking skeletons to keep me from straying outside the village as a child.”
Oliver smiled at that. He was still trying to take in the idea that he might be speaking to an actual descendant of the people who had lived in the canyon estate before it was destroyed. As they spoke, the party had reached the top of the slope and trudged across the rocky surface of the desert towards a large white passenger van parked about a quarter mile from the canyon wall.
Zaid noticed Oliver looking at the van and said, “We parked a few hundred meters away from the cliff so that our approach would not be heard by anyone in the canyon.”
“How often do your people visit this place?”
Hadiya answered him saying, “Six times a year my grandmother comes to bring offerings to the Old Gods. My mother accompanies her. One day my mother and I will take over the duties... or at least, so I had always expected. Now that you claim to have destroyed Sephor, who knows what will become of the rituals.”
They reached the van and Hadiya helped her grandmother into the center bench seat while the men took their places in the rear bench and driver’s seat. Once the old woman was settled, Hadiya turned to him and said, “I don’t know what to think of you, Oliver. You show up out of nowhere, bringing my grandmother nightmares and visions of death, confess to destroying our sacredly profane ancestor, and tell us that a relic we have worshiped from afar for generations is in peril. Part of me still wishes that grandmother had let the men shoot you down in the canyon. But then... this is a strange day.”
She turned away, shaking her head, and climbed into the van beside her grandmother.
Oliver paused briefly, unsure what to say. He still wasn’t certain whether these people were grateful or furious that he had destroyed Sephor’s undead body, and he wondered whether he would survive the day. These people kept using such a strange term to describe Sephor, sacredly profane. He thought he had an idea what they meant, but it was so vague he couldn’t be sure. Zaid called for Oliver to ride along in the front passenger seat. Oliver climbed in and settled into the seat beside Zaid, who was driving.
They set off southward, the rim of the canyon on their left as they drove. Zaid kept the van on rocky terrain and hard packed sand, steering clear of large rocks, ravines, and deep dunes where the wheels could become bogged down in soft sand. The men said nothing the entire journey, but Hadiya and her grandmother spoke constantly in the dialect Oliver could not understand. At times their voices rose and he could sense anger in the unfamiliar words, at others the old woman nearly wept as she spoke.
Oliver said nothing. Even for one accustomed to dangerous situations and supernatural events, this day had been filled with more than its fair share of startling revelations. He tried not to think about what Diana might be going through, or of the mercenaries who held her and might at this moment be standing at the entrance to the forgotten temple. He listened to the rhythm of the women speaking behind him and allowed his eyes to drift. Before Olive realized it was happening, he was asleep.
Chapter Fifteen
Oliver felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him awake. A voice he recognized, but couldn’t name, was shouting at him in Arabic, “Awake! We have arrived!”
Oliver opened his eyes and saw that the van had stopped in front of a two story mud brick building with a rusted tin roof. He saw more low brick buildings in the distance, each with a small array of solar panels bolted to the roof, and a small crowd of children and dogs surrounding a well at the center of a paved plaza. Streets radiated off from the plaza in five different directions, running between the buildings in narrow strips of dusty gravel.
The voice came again, a little louder this time and he felt a slap on his right shoulder, and Oliver snapped his head right to see Zaid holding the van door open with one hand as he shook Oliver’s shoulder with the other. “Good, you’re awake. Hadiya and Elder Layla are already in the house. They will be wanting to speak with you.”
Oliver pulled the door handle and slid out of the van. He stretched his back, legs, and arms tiredly, feeling a dull ache settling in. It was only mid-afternoon and he had already been attacked by an undead warrior, knocked out by a professional killer, kicked repeatedly in the ribs and gut by a disgraced Egyptian spook, and used for target practice by an enraged mercenary. His body was in desperate need of some good rest and the short nap he had taken in the van had only served to make his muscles seize up and drain him of adrenaline so his bruised flesh and stressed muscl
es had started to hurt.
He grabbed his bag from the floor in front of the passenger seat, swung the van door shut and stalked around the front of the van towards the open door of the mud brick house, his body aching the whole way.
A woman who looked remarkably like an older version of Hadiya opened the door in response to Oliver’s knock. She was dressed in a simple dress of white cotton that hung from her shoulders to her ankles. Delicately embroidered hieroglyphic designs ran down the front of the dress and across the shoulders and sleeves. The beginnings of wrinkles creased the corners of her eyes, which glinted at Oliver from behind large multifocal lenses.
She spoke to him in a strongly accented English. “Welcome to my home, Mr. Lucas. I am Duha, mother of Hadiya and daughter of the Elder Layla.”
Oliver bowed his head and replied, “Thank you for having me. I appreciate your mother sparing my life and bringing me to this place.”
Duha stepped back and waved for Oliver to enter, saying, “You are our honored guest. Please, come in.”
He stepped into a combined kitchen and dining room. An electric stove and refrigerator stood against one wall, under several rows of shelves built into the brick wall. Water pipes and electrical conduit ran along the baseboard of the room and disappeared through a hole knocked into the ancient bricks and patched with plaster. Small statues of the gods of ancient Egypt stood in nooks set into the walls around the room. The old woman, Elder Layla, reclined in a rattan seat beside a heavy wood table at the center of the room. Hadiya was nowhere in sight, but Oliver though he could hear running water from the back of the house and guessed that she had stepped into the bathroom.
Duha closed the door and moved to a seat across from her mother. She lowered herself into the chair and picked up an embroidery frame from the table. Oliver dropped his backpack beside the door and waited beside it until Duha waved him to a seat at the table. He settled into the seat, nervously hoping that the creaking rattan would support his weight.
Elder Layla began to speak. Her daughter translated, never looking up from her needlework as she spoke, “My honored mother asks you to describe what you seek. She spared your life in the sacred canyon because she believes you to be a good person, but desires to know what artifact you expected to find in our sacred land.” She paused in her stitching and tilted her head down to look at Oliver through the top of her glasses, “I know only what my daughter shouted on her way through the door, so I also look forward to hearing your explanation.”
Oliver proceeded to explain everything that had happened since the Senator pressured him to take the job searching for the staff that had belonged to Moses. He explained bringing Diana into the effort because of his unfamiliarity with Egyptian script, how the mercenaries had become involved, and how he and Diana had double-crossed the mercenaries to gain the information they needed. Hadiya came in while he spoke and busied herself chopping onions and garlic at the counter beside the stove. She set the knife down and turned around to lean against the counter with her arms crossed as Oliver described exploring Sephor’s house and chapel. This event was clearly the highlight of his story, as even Duha laid aside her needlework to gaze intently at Oliver as he described fighting Sephor’s living corpse. Both she and Elder Layla had several questions for Oliver on that regard, which he did his best to answer.
The old priestess seemed especially concerned with Oliver’s feelings about having destroyed Sephor. He answered honestly, explaining that he took no pleasure in destroying ancient ruins, or their guardians, but that he felt no regret at defending his own life.
“I apologize for defiling the body of your ancestor. Had he given me any warning...” Oliver explained.
Elder Layla shook her head and covered her face with her hands. Hadiya stepped up to her grandmother and rested her hands on the old woman’s shoulders. Duha grimaced and tapped her fingertips on the tabletop. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then shook her head and remained silent.
“Listen. If there is anything I can do to make amends... I don’t quite understand what’s going on here.”
Hadiya replied, “It’s complicated, Oliver. For my grandmother, most of all. We are all trained as priestesses of the old gods and guardians of Sephor’s memory, and she has spent nearly a hundred years bearing witness to his fate.”
She stepped away from her grandmother and pulled an apple from a basket over the sink. She tossed it to Oliver and looked at her mother. Duha shook her head and picked up her needlepoint. The Elder Layla continued to hide her face in her hands, weeping softly and muttering to herself. Hadiya took another apple for herself, then settled into a chair across from Oliver.
“You see, our worship of Sephor’s memory is different from how people perceive worship in your country. We don’t pray to Sephor to save our souls, or bring good fortune, or anything like that...” She took a bite of her apple and chewed it for a while, seeming to contemplate how to explain the mysteries of her faith to an outsider, then continued. “Have you ever been to Arlington, the cemetery?”
Oliver nodded, wondering where Hadiya was going with his.
“I went to Arlington once over spring break. The college arranged for us exchange students to visit many sites around your capital, but it is Arlington that I remember the most. They have men there who are sworn to guard the tomb of a nameless soldier. Over eighty percent of those who apply for the duty are rejected before they even enter training. Even then, most of the men who are accepted fail to complete the training. They memorize names, battles, rituals. They take vows that regulate their behavior on and off duty. They march a precise step every day in the sun, the rain, the snow. They do all this out of sense of duty to preserve the memory of the men who died and could not be identified.”
Hadiya paused to catch her breath. She had been speaking with increasing rapidity and forcefulness and Oliver was impressed at her passion. She leaned forward on her elbows and continued, “If you can understand that, Oliver, you will understand some of what we feel. The old gods and our ancestor are something to be remembered and honored, even if the rest of the world has forgotten them or written them off as silly tales told by ignorant people in the past.”
“You used a phrase when we first spoke: ‘profanely sacred’. What does that mean?”
“I, and my mother, and my grandmother, and all the women of our lineage for thousands of years, are sworn to protect the memory of Sephor. What I have not explained is that this memory is not a good one. We remember it as an admonition against lust, pride, and tampering with the powers of the gods.”
“As Sephor did, in creating the guardians.”
“Exactly. Our legends tell us that Sephor called upon the power of Osiris to guard his house against the corruption of death, and on Setesh to return the souls of the dead to their bodies as eternal guardians of his home and the treasures contained within.”
Duha interjected then, speaking in a hushed voice like that which she must have used to tell the story to her daughter, as it had been told to her. “And all was well with the mighty lord Sephor for a time. His lands prospered. His people gave birth to many skilled craftsmen and mighty warriors for the Pharaoh. Until one day the lord Sephor offended a visiting noble by taking his wife into his bed as a concubine. When confronted with his crime, the lord Sephor laughed and told his guest that all things were permissible to him, because the gods had raised him above all men except the pharaoh himself, even blessing him and giving him the strength to defeat foreign gods.
“The nobleman was outraged at his host’s lust and pride, but did not strike at Sephor directly. Instead he waited until the middle of the night, when all were asleep in bed except for Sephor’s undying guardians. The nobleman took a chisel in his hand and with five mighty blows he struck out the names of prideful Sephor and his family from the great engraving above the household altar. Then he fled into the night, taking his servants with him, but leaving his wife behind.
“That very night, the undying guardians
of Sephor’s lands fell upon the family in their beds. Many were slaughtered in their sleep. Others awoke to die with screams on their lips before they could rise from their beds. A few managed to fight. A very few slipped away into the darkness beyond the gates of the estate.
“In the midst of this chaos of bloodshed, Sephor fought the undying warriors that the gods Osiris and Setesh had granted him. Abandoning his wife and concubines to what fate might bring, he retreated to the shrine that he had erected to his own glory, in which rested the Guide Stone and Key, relics that served to remind him of his power and guarantee him access to the temple of the staff. It was there that the most mighty, and yet most foolish, of Pharaoh’s generals sealed his fate. Standing before the altar to Osiris and Setesh, grievously wounded by the swords of his own undying guards, the lord Sephor made an offering of his own blood and entrails in exchange for becoming the undying guardian of the chapel, so that he could see his memory protected for all ages.”
Duha’s voice faded away at the end, as if saying the words hurt too deeply. She laid her needlepoint on the table and wiped at her wet cheeks with the back of a hand.
Oliver watched the women in silence. He was unsure what to say. Never before had he been confronted with a legacy such as this. These women held within themselves the memory of an event drawn from the deepest chambers of history, passed on from one generation to the next over the course of five thousands years.
“As you can see, it is complicated.”
Oliver nodded. He swallowed, his throat dry and tight.
Hadiya continued, “I cannot speak for my mother, or my grandmother, but the feeling I have towards you now is a mingling of gratitude and horror. Gratitude that you have destroyed the legacy of foolish pride that we have been bound to remember. Horror that you would dare to defile the monument that we have guarded for so long.”
Duha, who had stopped weeping by this time, nodded and said something in their language. The Elder Layla dropped her hands from her face and looked at Oliver thoughtfully for a moment, then replied.