The Isis Knot

by Hanna Martine

  So they’d stay in New South Wales. And go back to Viv’s.

  William looked down on her with aching sadness. “What about what’s been left to us? What about what we’ve made?”

  They’d known about the child for mere minutes and her connection to it was tenuous at best. She was still so angry with Isis for doing this to both of them. William, however, was right there in front of her. Her eyes and heart and emotions were connected directly to him. Slice Ramsesh from her existence and there would still be William; Sera was sure of that now. To think about what kind of danger a kid might have to face twenty, eighteen, or sixteen years from now? The idea was abstract and intimidating.

  She wanted William with her here. Now. She wanted him safe.

  “I was there when Elizabeth was telling those guards about you. She said she’d killed you up at the fort because you’d raped her.”

  He winced, and she felt his fist clench by her waist. She pressed closer to him, her focus drawn to the blood-crusted gash Elizabeth had given him that was now turning his whole temple black and blue.

  “They were really interested in that,” she went on. “They knew your name, who you were. What if they went up there to make sure you were dead and your body wasn’t there? What if they’re waiting for you to come back?”

  He scratched at one side of his face. The hair there had grown long and soft and fair from the sun.

  “No other choice,” he muttered. “Have to take that chance.” With a little shake of his head, he blinked briefly into the sun. “I think you should—”

  Oh no. He was not going to take off without her again. Not now. “I’m not staying behind. I’m not leaving you. We’re not separating.”

  His lips twitched in a small smile. “I was going to say that I think you should come with me, but that we should wait until dark. Find some food and water first.”

  Some of the tension unknotted within her shoulders, but then she knew what he’d meant by finding food and water. They couldn’t exactly walk up to that lone house sitting back on the land and ask for handouts, and heading back into the Rocks would be asking for death or capture.

  In the end, he refused to let her steal. When he slinked back from the homestead holding a loaf of bread, she didn’t even ask how he’d gotten it and he didn’t say.

  He settled his back against a rock, pulled her into the circle of his arms, and she said, “Tell me about the navy. Tell me about the ships and what you did on them.”

  He did, in his short way, in that voice that somehow sounded like the water itself. He described squalls and battles and everyday life on board. The things he loved.

  They watched the sun march down below the hazy blue mountains in the west. Darkness fell, they waited several more hours until the night was long and black, and then they crept back to Fort Philip.

  The chaos in Sydney seemed to have settled, and now the town, though somewhat in the distance, rang horribly quiet. Unease made a mess of Sera’s stomach and she walked silently next to William, both of them scanning the shadows for movement.

  Ahead, the fort loomed dark and silent, alone at the edge of the settlement. He started determinedly for it. She clamped a hand on his arm and dragged him behind a bush.

  “I thought I saw something,” she whispered.

  He covered her hand with his own. “What? Where?”

  She pointed across the open space in front of the fort, to a stand of small trees where she could’ve sworn she saw a glint of light. Like a reflection on metal. “Over there. Maybe we shouldn’t’ve come in the night. Maybe we should wait for daylight, so we can see what’s around. Or who.”

  He rolled his lips together. “Waiting until morning means traveling under the sun. It has to be now. Tonight.”

  That fucking ring…

  “Please,” she whispered. “Just a little longer. I could’ve sworn I saw something.”

  He looked long at her face, then nodded and settled back, staring into the trees. The hour grew later and her muscles cramped from huddling in one spot for so long, but she was so tuned up she couldn’t even think about sleep.

  No movement. The wind itself seemed to have gone still. Maybe what she thought she’d seen earlier was just her anxiety playing tricks with her eyes and mind. Maybe it had just been a scrap of stray fabric twisted in the tree branches, or someone lighting a lamp far in the distance.

  At last, when Sirius and the hunter wheeled around the sky, her nervousness lost its edge. The timing felt right, the area secure.

  “Where did you put the ring?” she asked.

  He nudged his chin at the half-moon shape of the fort. “On the other side. Opposite from where we kept Elizabeth.” He rose, and his knees cracked. “Come.”

  Now or never, she thought. And though she wanted nothing more than to just let the ring stay there and get buried in rubble and time, the hum and flutter of Ramsesh—and now the other tiny being inside, that piece of William—pressed her forward.

  Hands linked, they hurried around the outside wall. She avoided glancing at the room where Elizabeth had cried her false tears and had nearly made Sera feel sorry for her. An evil ghost lurked there and it sent chills skittering over skin already as fragile as glass.

  William slowed his pace and ran his free hand along the wall, looking for the markings he’d mentioned before. At last he dropped to his knees and started digging with his hands. Sera gave him her back, arms tight around her waist, and peered into the bushes and trees. She felt incredibly exposed.

  “Is it still there?” she threw over her shoulder.

  The scrabbling stopped. “Aha. Yes.”

  She exhaled and turned around. He rocked to his feet and opened his fist to show her what sat inside. His hand and fingernails were black, and the ring lay in his palm among tiny pebbles and moist dirt. As he brushed some of the dirt away, its sweet smell wafted into her nose.

  It was the first time she’d seen the ring in person this close up. In Ramsesh’s memories, it had been shiny and intimidating. She bent over it carefully but didn’t touch, remembering with a chill what Elizabeth had said about Moore’s orders for her to put on the ring while wearing the cuff. How the combined magic would take the wearer of both things directly back to him. Back to Seth.

  The ring was huge and ugly. It looked so powerless, cradled inert in William’s dirty palm, though it was anything but. He nudged it with a finger, flipping it so Seth’s beastly image stared at her with challenging eyes. She stepped back, rubbing her arms and looking away with a shiver.

  The long nose of a rifle stared back.

  She inhaled sharply. William’s head snapped up.

  Thirty paces away, a soldier’s oily smile ripped out Sera’s heart. She recognized his face—the one who’d believed Elizabeth’s story of rape, the one who hadn’t been there to hear Sera’s truthful explanation. “William,” he said, looking extremely pleased with himself. “William Everard.”

  William’s jaw clenched tight as his fingers curled around the ring. The soldier whistled low, and three more uniformed men trotted from the bushes, one of them from the very place she’d convinced herself had been clear.

  The soldiers fanned out in a half-circle, the buckles on their coats jingling, to block escape routes. Despair dragged down her soul.

  “Taking another woman, are you?” sneered the lead soldier.

  “He never touched Elizabeth,” Sera shouted, because she knew William wouldn’t.

  “It’s no use,” he murmured at her side. “But thank you. For saying that.”

  The resignation in his tone punched her in the gut. She turned to him. The sorrow in his eyes was as infinite as the stars. It scared her more than the soldiers’ rifles. More than Seth.

  “The hunt ends here,” he said, eerily serene.

  “You are under arrest!” cried the soldier, but Sera’s attention was fixated on William.

  Dread turned her muscles to hot sludge. “What are you saying?”

  “Willi
am Everard!” The soldier’s voice was imperious and terribly loud. “In the name of the king you are charged with bolting—”

  William was staring over her shoulder, his eyes glazed. He said quietly only to her, “Here there’s nothing but death.”

  “—and the attack of an innocent woman—”

  “My life ends here,” William said.

  “No.” Her world was spinning again, her heart a sick, troubled organ in her chest. “Stop it.”

  “—and by orders of the Crown you shall be tried for your crimes. Step away from the woman and walk toward us now, or we will shoot you.”

  “But you and the babe,” William said, “are meant for better things. Great things. Amazing things.”

  “You’re scaring me, Will.”

  “Right now!” The collective sound of guns and footsteps didn’t scare her nearly as much as the mysterious surrender of the man standing before her.

  His smile was both beatific and full of doom. “Have I ever told you that I love it when you call me Will?”

  “Now, Everard!” One of the guns cocked, the sound of metal on metal. The soldiers’ footsteps drew closer.

  William blurred into motion, quick as the fighter he was. He snatched her hand and yanked her to him, pinning her back to his front. He wrenched one of her arms around and held her wrist against the small of her back. His other arm fastened around her neck. At the end of it, his balled fist still clutched the ring. This close she could feel the angry, soiled pulse of its magic calling to hers.

  All the soldiers were yelling now, their commands overlapping: “Let her go!” “Let her go right now!” “Give yourself up!”

  William started to drag Sera backward. “Lower your weapons or I’ll kill her!” he shouted.

  Sera knew that wasn’t true, but her mind reeled over his purpose. What the hell was he trying to do?

  He tightened his grip. “Back away!” he growled at the soldiers. Then, softly to her, “Trust me.”

  “Will, stop…” She clawed at his forearm.

  The soldiers didn’t back off, just fanned out more. If they got behind William they could shoot him in the back. She could heal him, yes, but at the great risk of being seen. And he would still be taken to the barracks and hanged anyway. Or…

  She could kill all the soldiers here and now. Yes, begged the chaos. Do it. Kill them all.

  Her vision wavered, the hate and desperation building inside her. She squeezed shut her eyes, concentrating on William alone, but the ring answered chaos’s call, sending a painful jolt through the cuff and up her arm, straight to her hammering heart.

  “They’ll kill you,” she told him. “And I won’t be able to bring you back.”

  William pulled her closer and said into her ear, “I’ve figured it all out.”

  “What?” She dared to open her eyes, and the shouting, threatening soldiers were closing in, turning her sight to flaming crimson.

  “If you kill me, you kill her, too!” William cried out, then whispered to her. “I know what Isis wants now. I know what I have to do. She wants our child; she wants her Horus, yes. But she needs you, too. With the god-hero inside you and all of Isis’s powers at your fingertips, you are the weapon, Sera. You.”

  He stopped moving. The world roared in her head. He spun her around so fast she stumbled, and then he had both of her wrists clamped in one of his strong hands. His grip was vise-tight. Unrelenting.

  His other fist unfurled, revealing the ring. And then she knew exactly what he intended to do.

  She screamed. She planted her heels and tugged against him with every bit of strength she had. The soldiers shouted for William to back down. Shouted and ordered and shouted more. He kept moving her, dragging her around so the soldiers couldn’t get a good shot on him, or if they did, they’d shoot her, too.

  Her fingers went numb—the feel of hope dying.

  “What if Seth comes for you when the child is too young or too weak?” he said. “You have to go to him now, when it’s still inside you. When the weapon is a part of you and you are strong enough to wield it.”

  She writhed and moaned, dropping to her knees. “No. No. Don’t do this! You said you wouldn’t leave me alone. You said it!”

  He grimaced, flinching from a phantom blow. Though his red-rimmed eyes shifted to the yelling, encroaching soldiers, he seemed not to see them. “You’ll always have me.”

  The words touched off an aching, wonderful pain. She thought, briefly, that that was what love must feel like.

  The ring glinted as he rolled it between thumb and forefinger. His hand shook as it descended toward hers.

  Sera kicked and moaned. The soldiers were closing in behind him. One drew a sword.

  “Will!” she cried. “Look out!”

  He ignored her, bringing the ring closer to her finger. She tried to fist her hands.

  “You don’t know where it will send me,” she pleaded, the words all blurred together. She was sobbing, her chest racking, the sorrowful, defeated look in his eyes absolutely killing her. “She could send me back to my time, and we’ll never find each other again.”

  For a shining moment she thought she’d done it. She thought she’d stopped him. The pause was a mere second, but it felt like an eternity. Over his shoulder she could see the metal of a sword coming down down down toward him.

  William’s burning stare fixed on her hand. Breath hissed in and out of his nose. He pried one of her fingers loose from the others. The ring descended.

  As the gold band hovered over her hand, he met her eyes. “You’re mine,” he said, “and I’ll love you until the day I die.”

  The ring came down over her finger, cold and heavy. Like a prisoner’s chain.

  CHAPTER 28

  Bitter cold sliced through Sera’s blood. Her muscles tightened to steel. She blinked into consciousness, but her doubled vision only showed smeared stars against an obsidian sky.

  Awareness came back to her and the pain started to fade. She was lying on ground so hard it felt like stone. Then she remembered what had happened.

  “Will.” His name came to her lips in broken pieces. Inside, Ramsesh yearned for her lost Amonteh, but the sorrow wasn’t anywhere near the strength of Sera’s.

  He’d abandoned her. Sent her away. Even though she’d pleaded. Even though he said he wouldn’t leave her again. Then he’d given himself up to the soldiers. Oh God… What were they doing to him at that very moment? Beating him? Dragging him away? Killing him?

  And where was she? When was she?

  A scream pierced the night. It was her scream, shrill and afraid. She touched her throat, feeling for the vibration, but it was still. Her tongue, silent. The scream came again, from a short distance away. She jerked her head toward the sound, her cheek scraping on the ground.

  Great towers of rock jutted up toward the stars, and she immediately knew their shape, what they guarded. She’d been deposited a hundred feet or so away from Ramsesh and Amonteh’s cave.

  A man’s muffled voice shouted something in anger. She couldn’t see him, but she knew the sound and tone. Malik Elsayed.

  The ring and Isis had returned her to Egypt. To almost the exact moment she’d disappeared.

  The sounds of a struggle—grunts and tense words and shuffling feet—filled the night. She popped to her feet and silently inched forward, keeping herself hidden behind the massive stone boulders that had protected the cave for two millennia. In the distance she could see the twin headlights of the Jeep that had brought her and Malik up here from Edfu.

  She peeked around a shadowed rock. There, outside the narrow cave entrance marked by Amonteh’s crude rendering of the Isis knot, was Malik and herself. Her hair was still long, her clothes modern.

  She shuddered, the sight strange and unsettling. How could there possibly be two of her in one place?

  Malik was in his linen suit, the desert-chic garb that had done its job of lulling her into his trust, his teeth so white against his dusky skin. He wa
s holding Before Sera tightly, pinning her arms from behind, crushing her back to his chest. The gun was pressed to her temple. Her legs flailed uselessly, her heels stabbing at the ground. She was crying.

  Current Sera’s arms tingled and stung in remembered pain. Her heart beat erratically in remembered panic. It all came back to her so vividly. The terror. The helplessness. The uncertainty.

  Malik said, “I’m stronger than you. I always have been. I can’t take back what you stole from me, but I can take you. I can use you.”

  The image of Seth’s beast burst from Malik’s body. The giant, horrifying half animal sprang into translucent being, rising high above its host. The lathered mouth sneered. Muscled arms ended in savage claws. Its arrow tail cracked like a whip.

  Current Sera didn’t remember seeing Malik transform like that. That would have been an image she’d never have been able to forget. But maybe she couldn’t remember that part because at the time it’d happened, she hadn’t had the ability to actually see it.

  She rubbed a hand across her belly.

  Just then the driver jogged into the little canyon, responding to Before Sera’s screams. The second he saw Malik holding Before Sera at gunpoint, he skidded to a stop, his face going pale. He was babbling something in Arabic, hands held out, trying to help Sera.

  Current Sera’s gut fell into her feet. She almost burst into the scene, waving her arms and shouting for the driver to get back, to run away. To save himself. If she could do nothing else here—if William had been mistaken in sending her back—at least she could save this innocent man.

  But she couldn’t. Goddamn it, she couldn’t. Rage made her shake, made her vision go all blurry. Made it narrow down, powered by the chaos. She squeezed her eyes shut, the tremors in her body growing more and more violent.