Maybe I needed a new plan. Or any plan beyond “get to the only city in ancient Egypt I’ve ever visited.” I didn’t even know if Heru or Aset or Nik were there. Hell, I didn’t even know when I was, beyond sometime before the 10th century. Was I in Roman Egypt or Ptolemaic? Would I return to Men-Nefer to find that the Persians were in charge or the Nubians? Or would I discover that I was stranded in the heart of Egypt’s most well-known ancient era, the New Kingdom?
The more I realized I didn’t know anything about what I was attempting to jump into—literally—the more apparent it became that there was only one place for me to go: the Hathor Temple in Men-Nefer.
Aset had set up the ancient order of priestesses devoted to the goddess Hat-hur—to me, essentially—on my direction after I rescued her from her abductor. When I first arrived in Old Kingdom Egypt nearly a year ago, my time, the priestesses had been expecting me. And they’d been waiting for me millennia later, ready to prepare me for my journey into the ancient past. Whatever era I was in currently, I hoped I could count on the temple being a safe haven. The priestesses could help me get my bearings. I could get some much-needed R & R while I figured what the hell I was going to do next. It wasn’t a sure thing, but it was all I had.
After one more sip of water, I corked the bottle and stood. I couldn’t do a hundred more of those little two-mile shifts, hopping my way across the Sahara. I wouldn’t make it, not if three shifts over a scant seven miles had knocked me on my butt.
But five twenty-mile jumps—that should do the trick. I could take a long break between each and would reach the temple in far less time.
Decided, I focused on the horizon, then closed my eyes and imagined I was a bird soaring high overhead. I envisioned how much further I needed to move this time, creating a mental image of a bird’s-eye view of the desert and pinpointing my landing spot, ten times further away than my last spatial shift. With a deep breath, I focused my will. Go.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, hands and knees sinking into the gritty sand and head hanging as the smoky, multihued tendrils of At dissipated all around me. I was dizzy and out of breath. And next time would be worse. What about the time after that? And the one after that?
I wouldn’t make it. I knew it, somewhere deep inside me. And if I didn’t make it to the temple, I sure as hell would never make it home to my family.
Sitting back on my heels, I brushed my hair out of my eyes with sand-coated fingers. I jutted my lower jaw and stared up at the sky. On the horizon almost dead east, the moon was rising, a solid disk of silver.
According to some of the ancient lore, the sun and the moon were considered the two eyes of the sky god, Horus—the mythological version of my very real bond-mate, Heru. His left eye, the moon, was said to be weaker than his right eye, the sun, because the desert god, Seth—the mythological version of my formerly possessed father, Set—stole Horus’s left eye during the battle for the divine throne after Osiris’s death. Seth is said to have damaged the eye, and though it was eventually returned to Horus, it was forever weakened, never to outshine the sun.
Well, the moon was strong enough for me. It was a gleaming beacon spurring me onward. I would make it home to Heru—to Marcus. To our children. I would make it home. I would.
“Alright,” I muttered, once again pulling out my waterskin. “I can do this.” I chugged the rest of the water, corked the bottle, and didn’t even bother with standing. I’d probably collapse or pass out after this next jump, anyway. Maybe it would be too much. Maybe it would kill me. Maybe. But I had to try.
Closing my eyes, I imagined the inner sanctuary of the ancient Hathor temple. I pictured the interior walls, coated in plaster and covered in brightly painted reliefs depicting the goddess watching over worshipers and revelers, blessing the land, and interacting with the other gods, namely her consort, Horus. I could see it all so clearly—the three small recesses set into the walls at chest height, the tall, narrow doorway leading out to the temple hall, the dim moonlight shining in through that single opening …
For the first time since using this new sheut, I felt the swirling tendrils of At snake around me. I felt them tear me out of reality, keeping me whole and sane only by way of their protective embrace. I felt the chaos beyond them, the disorder of possibility tap-tap-tapping, searching for a way in. And I felt my cocoon of smoky At shatter as reality slammed back into place.
The ground lurched and tilted beneath my hands and knees, and I had no choice but to lie down on my side to recover some semblance of stability. Had I missed? Because it sure as hell felt like I’d landed on a boat in the midst of a violent storm.
Remotely, I heard the slap of sandals on a stone floor, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head to look, let alone open my eyes. A moment later, rushed words were being thrown down at me. A young woman, by the sound of her voice, though I had no idea what she was saying.
I waved my hand in her general direction. “Is this the temple of Hat-hur in Men-Nefer?” I asked in the original tongue.
She was quiet for a moment. “It is,” she said, though her response sounded unsure.
“I am her,” I told her. “I am Hat-hur.”
“You—I—are you certain? You are the Golden One?”
I gave her a thumbs-up. “Yes, quite certain. Just give me a moment and I shall introduce myself properly.” I inhaled and exhaled heavily. “I have had a long day.”
40
Chance & Fate
“How long have I been asleep?” I’d been awake for all of three seconds, but I was impatient for the priestess sitting at my bedside to answer. I was impatient, but my stomach was desperate. “And might there be anything to eat?”
I was famished, and I felt lightheaded. No headache, though, which meant bonding withdrawals had yet to kick in. I couldn’t have been out for more than a couple hours, then, and while I felt as though I could sleep for days, the need for nourishment had overridden my exhaustion and roused me. I was still underweight, thanks to my regenerative abilities healing the damage to my body during childbirth and my minor head wound shortly after. Food was my number-one priority, getting home to my babies a close second.
The priestess—a different one from the skeptical young woman who’d found me in the inner sanctuary—offered me a reserved smile and a bow of her head. She was middle-aged, her onyx shoulder-length hair decorated with a delicate headband of woven gold thread and turquoise and quartz beads that reminded me of the one I’d worn the last time I was here, and she wore a simple, slightly loose-fitting white linen shift.
“There is food already set out for you, Golden One,” she said, her mastery of the original tongue impressive; she had almost no accent whatsoever. She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her line of sight to a table set out with a relative feast of fruits, bread, cheeses, and other things hidden in dishes that I couldn’t see clearly from my reclined angle. “I shall send for the roast and stew, if it pleases you. We did not wish for the scents to wake you.”
I stared at her for several seconds. That was how long it took my sluggish, sleepy mind to puzzle out that she was waiting for a response. “That—” I cleared my throat and propped myself up on my elbows. “That sounds lovely. Thank you.”
Again, the priestess smiled almost hesitantly. She stood and turned away from the bed, but I grabbed her wrist before she could leave.
“How long was I asleep?” I could see it was still night through the rectangular windows cut in the uppermost quarter of the wall, high above the table. But depending on the time of year, night could last a mere nine hours at this latitude or nearly fourteen—and five hours was a big difference when racing against the clock. I didn’t feel any hint of the bonding withdrawal headache yet, which had always been the first symptom for me, but I knew that once it started, I’d only have a matter of days to either get home or find Heru and soak up some of his bonding pheromones. If I didn’t, I would die and so would my chances of ever seeing my children again.
&nbs
p; Get home. I could barely think about what that would entail. Traveling through time, that was a given—but if my recent stint in spatial shifts was anything to go by, my sheut’s time-jumping juice would prove to be equally weak, at least in comparison to what I was used to. I’d barely managed to cross two hundred miles in a night; how would I manage millennia between now and when the withdrawals killed me?
“The sun was born and died twice while you rested, Golden One,” the priestess said, only risking meeting my eyes for the briefest moment.
My heart stumbled, and for few seconds, I no longer felt hungry. “Two days,” I breathed, releasing her wrist. “I was out for two full days?” It wasn’t possible. That meant it had been three or four days since I’d last seen Heru. Bonding withdrawals should’ve been in full swing by now.
“Y—yes, Golden One.” The priestess bowed her head once more. “I shall return shortly,” she said and rushed out of the room.
“Wonderful.” I fell back onto the hard mattress and stared up at the plain white plaster ceiling, barely managing to fight off panic by focusing on the sound of my heart beating, on the whoosh of air in and out of my lungs.
“You are quite different from what I expected,” a woman said from the doorway. I recognized her voice as belonging to the younger priestess from before.
I tucked my arm behind my head, propping it up.
The priestess stood in the doorway, hands clasped before her. She wore a nearly identical shift and headband as the older, shyer priestess, the only deviation being the gold-plated amulet of a sun disk cradled in cattle horns on the front of her headband.
“You must be related to Denai,” I said. The head priestess I’d spent so much time with the last time I was here had had a particular je ne se quoi about her, something that this young priestess had in spades.
Her eyes widened. “I am Anai, head priestess of this temple. Denai was my grandmother.” She took a step into the room. “How did you know?”
I smiled, glad I finally had a clue as to the time period—we were in the First Intermediate Period, sometime during the Ninth or Tenth Dynasties, probably nearing the year 2100 BCE. “I spent a great deal of time with Denai once, many years ago,” I told Anai. “You remind me of her.” I suppressed a laugh. “Though perhaps a little more spirited.” I didn’t tell her that one day, thousands of years from now, I would meet another head priestess of this order named Anai, possibly one of this Anai’s descendants.
“I—you really are—my grandmother spoke of you often.” Anai crossed the room and sat in the chair at my bedside, bowing her head. “Please, Golden One, tell me how I can serve you.”
“Pshhh …” I waved a hand dismissively. “By not doing all the bowing and scraping, for starters.” I sat up and turned so my legs dangled over the edge of the bed. The slightest amount of weight on my shaking legs told me I wouldn’t make it to the table of food on my own. “And a shoulder to lean on would be much appreciated, as well.”
Anai lifted her head, her expression quizzical but her eyes determined. “Of course, Golden One.” She slipped an arm around my waist and used her other hand to grip mine.
“‘Hat-hur’ is fine,” I told her as we slowly made our way to the table. “‘Golden One’ is nice and all, but it is just so …” I made a “yuck” face, which earned me a giggle.
“Very well, Hat-hur.” Anai left me at the table, my hands on the tabletop to keep me standing, while she retrieved the chair from the bedside. In true Egyptian fashion, there wasn’t an extravagance of furniture in the room—just the bed, the chair, and the table. “There,” she said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You may sit now.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed a fig from the nearest dish and popped the entire thing into my mouth. In my defense, it was on the smaller side, as figs go. I held a hand over my mouth as I chewed and looked up at Anai. “Are you hungry?” I motioned to the spread with my other hand. “Feel free to join in.”
I swallowed, tossing a torn-off piece of flatbread into my mouth. While I chewed that, I leaned forward and retrieved an earthenware pitcher from the center of the table and gave it a sniff. Wine—light, fruity, and barely alcoholic. I poured it into an alabaster goblet, quickly falling into a pattern of shoving food into my mouth and washing it down with gulps of wine.
Anai watched me from the end of the table, a tiny nugget of cheese in her hand and her eyes opened wide.
“Sorry,” I said between a gulp of wine and another bite. “I still seem to be recovering from—” My explanation caught in my throat as I thought of the twins, my precious newborns, who could be with anybody right now. With my hunger partially sated, the need to find them became all-consuming. They’re with Marcus, I told myself. Please let them be with Marcus …
I cleared my throat. “I was injured, and though my kind heal quickly, it uses up a lot of energy.”
“I see,” Anai said, taking the tiniest nibble of cheese.
I continued my gorging, though at a slightly more moderate pace. I took a short break while a couple priestesses brought in warm dishes—a thick, savory lentil soup, some sort of roasted fowl, and a spicy stew that tasted like beef, only gamier. It seemed to take forever to sate my hunger, but in time I was finally, blissfully full.
I stood, legs feeling strong and steady but eyelids drooping. I was tempted to fight against the regenerative sleep, but I wagered that once the bonding withdrawals hit, I would need to be at full strength. And I would have to survive the withdrawals if I were to have any chance of making it home to my family.
So I ambled back to the bed and practically collapsed onto the hard, thin mattress, already asleep by the time my feet left the floor.
***
“Anai?”
“I am here, Golden—Hat-hur.”
I opened my eyes, turning my head to look at her. She’d returned to the chair at my bedside. I had no idea how long she’d been sitting there, patiently watching over me while I slept, let alone how long I’d been asleep. I was almost afraid to ask. At least, I still felt no sign of bonding withdrawals. “How long was I asleep this time?”
“It is midday,” Anai said, glancing at the open-air windows near the top of the wall. The light streaming in through the openings was crisp, bright, and golden. “You have been asleep for six or seven hours.”
I took a deep breath, blowing it out as I sat up. Could’ve been worse. I stretched, easing the aches and kinks caused by the thin mattress and from sleeping without a pillow. I’d never grown accustomed to the hard headrests used by these ancient people, and I’d been too tired to bother making any kind of a pillow before passing out.
My stomach groaned, but with a usual hunger, not that desperate appetite specific to the regenerative process. It looked like I was healthy enough; it was time to get on with my journey.
I picked away at a spread of food nearly identical to the first, taking bites between packing in preparation to leave. I wrapped up less-perishable food items in the oilcloths saved from my previous stash of provisions and tucked them into my bag, then washed up using the small washing stand and toiletry chest in one corner of the room. Finally, I donned my sword harness.
She eyed the sword, one eyebrow raised. When she made that expression, she looked so very much like her grandmother; I hid a smile. “Will you be meeting the others of your kind in Abdju?”
“Abdju?” It was the ancient Egyptian name for Abydos, one of the oldest cities in this land. It was located in Upper Egypt—or southern Egypt—and, most notably to this era, was the location of Pepi I’s funerary temple, which would blossom into a great temple of Osiris in the years to come. I had no idea why she would expect me to go there.
“When last Aset visited,” Anai said, “she mentioned that the Netjer-Ats would be gathering in Abdju for the succession.”
I paused in adjusting the harness’s straps—I’d filled out a bit during my stay here—and stared at Anai. “Apologies, but I have been out of touch for some time. What succession
?”
“Now that Osiris has passed on,” Anai said, “it is time to lay him to rest and decide on the next leader of the Netjer-Ats.” Remotely, I wondered if that was why the temple at Abdju would one day become a cult center for the worship of Osiris—because he’d supposedly been laid to rest there. “Aset explained that the contest was between Heru and Set, though she felt certain Heru would emerge victorious.”
The blood drained from my face, and my heart went cold.
That succession. The one where Heru did win, but two days after he was instated as leader of the Council of Seven, he was attacked by Set and nearly killed. The one where he’d only survived because Aset had stepped in, distracting Set while her people carried Heru off to safety. The one where Aset was supposed to have died. At least, according to the rest of the world.
“How long ago was Aset here?” I asked, my voice hollow.
“A month ago, perhaps … maybe longer?” So, in ancient terms, at least thirty days, but maybe more.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that I was here, now. According to Marcus, Aset had sacrificed herself to save him, but what if that wasn’t the whole story? Marcus—Heru, at the time—had been blinded in Set’s attack, not to mention wounded so severely that he’d been near death. He’d hardly been in any position to remember everything that had happened. To remember if I’d been there.
And I no longer believed in coincidence. This past year had cured me of that. If I was here, now, there was a reason.
I finished adjusting the leather harness. “The Netjer-Ats are meeting in Abdju, you said?”
Anai nodded.
I lifted my bag’s strap over my head, settling it on my shoulder, then followed with my waterskin. “Do you know where, exactly?”
“The Temple of Osiris, of course.” So apparently the transformation of Pepi I’s funerary temple had already begun.
“Of course,” I said under my breath. It didn’t really matter—the shift there was going to stretch my limits regardless. Abdju was about four hundred miles south of Men-Nefer, over four times as long as my farthest spatial shift, the one that had all but knocked me unconscious.
Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) Page 28