The Darkness was rising again.
He wanted to be sure their guard was still down and weakening.
Soon, he would be King in Narmer’s stead…
The messenger waited for Saini impassively, his dark eyes still but implacable. He wouldn’t leave until Saini gave him an answer, Saini knew, but Saini suddenly didn’t wish to give him one. He was done. It was over. He’d been foolish, but now he saw the error of his ways. Inside, Saini shook, he trembled, but as much as he wished he could pretend he’d never started down this path, he knew he had.
If there were any day he wished to take back other than the day the Lady Banafrit had died it was the day he’d spoken to a stranger in the market – the Grand Vizier’s man, although Saini hadn’t known it then.
A question here, a question there, and suddenly Saini had found himself spewing all his frustrated ambitions into the ear of a stranger over several cups of beer.
That had been all it took. His anger and frustration, no, more, his bitterness with the Lady Banafrit for choosing another over him, had led him down this path… Now he knew why Banafrit had chosen as she had. He was weak, a lesser vessel.
Now what would he do?
The messenger waited. Saini knew there would be no returning without an answer – the messenger knew what the punishment for failure was, as did Saini.
“Tell the Vizier I’ll be there after moonrise in two days time,” Saini lied, to give the man something before someone saw him and took notice. He wanted to weep for fear.
One didn’t lightly cross the Grand Vizier.
The messenger looked at him, but said nothing. An answer was all he’d needed.
With a nod, he ran lightly away.
It wasn’t an appointment Saini intended to keep.
Terror went through him at the thought.
He would keep close to the temple during the next few days and weeks, stay within the walls. Eventually even Kamenwati would give up, surely. And the Grand Vizier couldn’t touch him on temple grounds...
Could he?
It was well after moonrise and the little priest still hadn’t come. Nor did Kamenwati believe he would or had ever intended to. His jaw tightening, he wasn’t well pleased. Did the little priest dare to think he could ignore the summons of the Grand Vizier? Rage turned his vision red.
Nor had his visit to the King the previous day gone well, either.
By all indications Kamenwati’s absence had scarcely been noticed nor was his presence as desired as it had once been in the days when his glamour held Narmer tight in its grip.
Since he’d been gone, the King had taken the reins of power back into his own hands, after all of Kamenwati’s slow, careful effort to extricate those reins from him with honeyed words and gentle persuasion. Now neither the Generals nor the Priests and Priestesses required an audience with the Grand Vizier first, as had once been arranged by Kamenwati, to see the King. They had only to send a request for his time.
In fact, General Khai had been meeting with Narmer when Kamenwati arrived. Kamenwati had walked in unannounced as had always been his habit in the past. Both Narmer and Khai looked somewhat perturbed by unexpected presence, as if he were an interruption.
Narmer himself had asked Kamenwati to wait outside while he spoke to his General.
His General. The King’s. Narmer’s.
Khai. A foreigner named General over all of Egypt’s armies.
The tall, handsome general had looked at him evenly. Once upon a time, one such as he wouldn’t have dared look at Kamenwati without the proper respect and a touch of dismay, or even fear.
They all had.
General Khai’s confidence and calm were irritating.
All in all, that day hadn’t gone well. Nor had the days since, and now the little priest thought he could avoid his summons?
Kamenwati still had power. Considerable power. If only of a different kind.
His jaw tightening, Kamenwati narrowed his eyes and sent out a Summons.
He would have the little priest here. Now.
Saini hadn’t been asleep. He hadn’t slept well. Apprehension had dogged him all day. Beside him his wife slept peacefully. He’d never spoken to her of his meetings with the Grand Vizier. It was better she didn’t know. The longer it went on the more he didn’t want to think of those visits much himself.
His stomach was in knots as he tried not to toss and turn, thus waking her and her questions,.
Dark magic hit him like a blow in the solar plexus, all of the air escaping his lungs sharply.
He bit his lip to keep from crying out and stumbled out into the main room of their quarters, hoping he hadn’t woken her.
Another wrenching pain tore through him.
How? He was in Isis’s own house…he should be safe from even the Grand Vizier here.
Another sharp tug. His stomach felt as if it were tearing…
Suddenly Saini remembered the glass of wine he’d drunk in Kamenwati’s house and cursed himself.
It had seemed only a courtesy, a great favor from the Grand Vizier, to have a glass of very good red wine poured by the Grand Vizier’s very own hand.
The wine had been very dark, very red.
Suddenly Saini remembered all the rumors and stories of dark magic that hovered around the Grand Vizier. Tales that he’d discounted in his bitterness, jealousy and rage. He couldn’t be sure now if he wanted to be ill, or weep, or both…but he suddenly found himself walking toward the door as if compelled.
He was and helpless to prevent it.
Desperately, he tried to fight the compulsion.
The walk was long. Each step was torture as he fought it, but he was drawn inevitably to the one place where he didn’t want to go. He prayed to the Goddess…but there was no answer… In that moment he knew he’d abandoned her as he’d abandoned Banafrit. There was only the new High Priestess. Irisi.
He fought his hate.
So he went, whether he wished or not…
The side gate, the servant’s gate, opened slowly, a reminder he wasn’t an honored person here as he’d once thought he was, not a priest, but merely another of Kamenwati’s minions.
It was another reminder of his proper place.
Shamed, Saini bowed his head as he stepped through into Kamenwati’s chief estate.
Only then did the compulsion leave him, at the steps leading into Kamenwati’s receiving room.
It was in him to run, although he had little doubt Kamenwati would simply haul him back. Not that he couldn’t try. but the effort would be futile. And while there was always the chance that one of Kamenwati’s men would kill him…Saini didn’t want to die.
Not yet.
So he went.
The Lord Kamenwati, Grand Vizier of all Egypt, sat on his great chair in his receiving room and waited, tall and dark, brooding, his hooded black eyes looking to the ceiling as if Saini didn’t exist, his jaw tight.
“You,” the Grand Vizier’s majordomo said, “were to be here at moonrise. You were not. The Grand Vizier is displeased.”
Saini groveled, shame and fear going deep as he prostrated himself before Kamenwati despite his intention not to, he found he couldn’t help it.
Satisfied, Kamenwati looked down on the priest. That was more like it.
“You had something to tell me. You came on a day you were not requested,” he said. “What was it you came to tell me?”
For a brief moment, Saini tried to step back from the precipice, from that final betrayal.
“Nothing, my Lord,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t shake as badly as it seemed. “I heard you were ill and wished to offer my services as a healer.”
His skills there were known. It wasn’t impossible.
Kamenwati heard none of it. He knew a lie when it was spoken, for his God was the master of lies.
Trembling, Saini risked a glance upward.
Those black raven’s eyes were fixed on him. Raven’s eyes. Terror didn’t begin to describe what he felt in tha
t moment. His bowels went cold and loose. The God Set. The God of Evil. Among his creatures were the ravens. Surely not. It was his imagination.
Suddenly the dark presence of that sinister God seemed to be all around him. Surrounded, oppressed by it, Saini shuddered. He prayed to Isis, but he couldn’t find the Goddess of love in this place or in his heart. In truth, he hadn’t felt the Goddess’s presence around him since he’d begun this.
Or rather, he’d abandoned Her on this doorstep, for She wouldn’t have abandoned him.
Suddenly, Kamenwati’s attention was fully focused. On him.
In one swift movement, the Grand Vizier was off his chair and had Saini by the scruff of his neck, lifting him from his feet to dangle in front of him.
The strength of the man was horrifying. Saini had never known anything like it. His feet dangled nearly a foot from the floor.
“Tell me, Priest,” Kamenwati demanded.
His Marid-hunger tore at him and he let the little priest see it.
To his horror, Saini watched the Lord Kamenwati as something within the other man shifted and changed. His head moved back and forth like a cobra’s as it hypnotized its prey prior to its strike. The Grand Vizier’s eyes had changed, glowing from within like banked embers as the pupils narrowed to slits.
“It’s nothing,” Saini stammered, trying to find his courage. “Nothing.”
Kamenwati’s eyes focused on him, changing again until they’d gone completely black, utterly dark, with no white showing, bottomless, fathomless.
Saini whimpered. He drowned in those eyes, the Lord Kamenwati invading his thoughts to find what it was he hid.
In vain, Saini tried to fight the intrusion, calling up all the spells he knew, but his will was too weak, and his fear too great.
Memories flashed through his mind. He heard his voice speak, his voice compelled.
His jaw working, Kamenwati listened as he fought back furious anger.
So, his slave had found another, or so they whispered.
Khai. The foreign General.
In fury, he remembered Narmer asking him to leave so he could meet with his General. It was insult on injury. His General. As if Khai would even have his position had Kamenwati not removed Akhom from it by setting the Djinn on the army.
It should have been Baraka.
Kamenwati had thought then that the younger General might be more amenable but he hadn’t. He’d politely refused all Kamenwati’s invitations.
Fury burned more deeply, until everything Kamenwati saw was stained red.
It remained to be seen, now, whether General Khai was truly capable on the battlefield. That skill was about to be tested as no other had been. Not even Akhom.
If he lived so long…
Kamenwati looked to the little priest, who’d thought to hold this back from him. He needed to be punished. Appropriately.
There was no better punishment for this one than knowledge…and living with what he learned.
“Come, priest,” Kamenwati said, dropping him, curling a finger in command.
Involuntarily, at the mercy of Kamenwati’s magic, Saini lurched to his feet and followed.
Below stairs.
The tales…
A smile touched the Grand Vizier’s mouth, a cold and frightening expression that sent chills through Saini’s bowels. He cowered as much as he was able.
Saini’s stomach curdled and he retched in fear as he saw what awaited him. To his horror, Lord Kamenwati all but threw him into a room dominated by an altar to the God Set, the God of Chaos and Evil…and the dangling bodies of Djinn.
“You fool,” the Grand Vizier said. “It was I who set the Djinn loose on the world. I who had your precious Banafrit killed. And it will be I who rules all of Egypt in the end.”
The sickness in Saini’s stomach grew with each word.
Banafrit. Kamenwati had killed Banafrit.
Saini stared at the Grand Vizier, blinking, heartsick, soul sick…
Kamenwati had loosed the Djinn on Egypt.
And what of Irisi, now High Priestess? Or General Khai, Egypt’s last hope?
What had he done?
Nor could he tell them without betraying himself, without revealing what he’d done…
It was with great pleasure that Kamenwati finally shared the truth with the little priest. He saw that knowledge in Saini’s eyes and smiled.
“You can go now,” Kamenwati said.
Saini ran.
Kamenwati shook his head.
The little priest hadn’t seen the one thing that should have sparked the most terror in him had he but known and understood what it was he saw. He hadn’t even remarked on it, and yet it had been there in the room with him.
But he was a fool.
The Horn was finished, at long last. No trace of blood of any kind remained on it. It was as if the bone and cartilage of the Horn had absorbed every drop. If anything, the copper with which it had been bound with seemed to gleam all the more brightly. The rubies glittered, although their cores were shadowed, and the black jewels had gained bloody depths heretofore unseen.
Kamenwati lifted the darkly beautiful thing from its resting place.
He smiled.
Narmer thought he didn’t need Kamenwati anymore.
And the slave girl had found herself a lover, had she? That handsome foreign General.
Kamenwati shook his head. He’d warned her. What would she say as she watched her beloved die? And she would watch as the Djinn tore him to pieces before her eyes, as they feasted on his heart. Kamenwati was determined to see to it himself.
This was his time, a time for the Darkness to rise once again…but this time it wouldn’t retreat.
Thebes wasn’t the place for it, though. Not yet. He would rule here if he could. Soon it would be he who sat on the King’s throne not Narmer. But not yet. It remained to be decided if he would sit there as a hero or as a conqueror, whether he would be greeted with acclamations or lamentations.
He didn’t dare take another with him as he strode out into his compound, not even his charioteer, as much as he hated doing such menial chores himself.
Resigning himself to that fate, he drove himself out of the city – south and west to the desert until darkness surrounded him.
Then he lifted his creation to his lips and blew once to Call a greater darkness out of the night, a summons bound by blood that was nearly irresistible…
He felt them respond.
In the deepest heart of the desert Darkness rose up once again from where they’d been hidden, in greater numbers than before.
They hadn’t liked the pain, it had disturbed them, but they’d disliked the taste of defeat even more. It angered them. They were nearly immortal. They were Djinn. They remembered the villages and those who had cowered. The fear, the screams and the cries had fired their blood with need.
And the feasting.
They were hungry…
Very hungry.
Irisi came out of sleep as if she’d been stung, an eerie wail that rang through her dreams and into the night.
Sitting up and shaking his head to clear the awful sound from his ears, Khai propped himself up on his elbow, instinctively reaching for his sword.
From the gardens below Irisi heard growling roars amid cries of protest and dismay from he priests and priestesses.
Even the lions had heard it, to judge by their outcry.
Irisi looked at Khai. He had no magic.
“You heard it too?”
Khai nodded slowly as he looked at her, letting out a breath.
He’d thought the sound real. A chill ran over him, raising goose bumps.
“An odd sound? Almost a howl? I wasn’t sure whether it was real or part of a dream or nightmare.”
Irisi turned to look at him, more than alarmed that Khai should sense it as well… If even those with no magic could feel it…?
“Yes.”
More dark magic and of such intensity that even Khai �
� who had no magic – sensed it.
What was it they did, this dark wizard or wizards?
Was it Kamenwati?
Every attempt to place someone inside his compound had met with failure, not that she was surprised.
If it was Kamenwati, what was it he was doing? It couldn’t be good.
Irisi looked at Khai, and shuddered before settling back into his arms…
They would find out soon enough. Of that she had no doubt.
Sitting in the wine sink, Saini drained his cup as if were water. He knew he should go to the Lady Irisi, she who was now High Priestess. He should tell her what he’d done, what he’d been compelled to do, but he was too ashamed.
She would hate him and rightly so.
He hated himself.
And General Khai?
If he died, what then for Egypt with another General lost, and so soon? Who would replace him? There were rumors about Baraka…
He, Saini the healer, had done this.
There wasn’t enough wine in all Egypt to drown his shame.
But he tried.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Smoke and shadows, fire and darkness, rose up out of the deepest hollows of the desert. That darkness was terrible, and it was hungry. It gathered and grew, then it swept out of the desert in a great rush like a sandstorm, save that it was black. That darkness slipped silently along the walls of the village. It found the cracks, the voids, and seeped through them to claim its first victims, its initial hosts. Their possessed victims silenced those on guard and opened the gates.
Time, even less than half a year, had eased the fears of those who’d suffered the previous attacks. The guards’ wariness had grown lax as the days had passed uneventfully. Death was a harsh price to pay for their lack of diligence but it was the price they paid all the same.
A silent struggle, as one after another fell to the sila.
Shadow swept within the gates. It dimmed the torches as shadows and smoke flowed silently down the pathways.
Dogs barked and then yelped as they too were silenced.
Helpless to avert that which came, the cats slipped away, silently.
The first villages to the south and west fell swiftly and very nearly soundlessly – or at least as soundlessly as far as those of the world outside world were concerned. Their terrible screams and cries were heard only within the walls that had once protected them. No one escaped to warn others in the path of what came. Those at the fort in the south weren’t so unaware, some few recognized their peril from the terrible days only a few short months previously.
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