by James Bennet
Grasping the reason for his obstruction, his suspicion became a certainty. He levelled his glare upon the knight. What, he now realised, only looked like the knight.
“You’re not Maurice Bardolfe,” he said.
He noticed the patch of fur at the old man’s shoulder, some kind of dignitary’s stole laced on to the jacket of his tux. Yellow fur, golden in the sun, with dark spots patterned across it. Leopard skin. He didn’t need to recall his vision in the Alps to place the final piece of the puzzle. The breach in the Lore had alarmed and shocked him, leaving so many niggling questions. Now he had the answers. After centuries upholding the Pact, watching over the hidden Remnants, the Guild would never have betrayed itself and gone against the grain of its purpose. And there had always been a missing player in the game.
“I am a shadow,” the imposter said. “The man who cast it a distant memory. I am the dark side of a Karnak obelisk, escaping the Eye of Ra and stretching across the sands of time.”
“Poetic,” Ben said. “You know, I’m not as dumb as I look. This location. The magic bricks. You’re him, aren’t you? Baba Kamenwati. When Winlock broke into your tomb, he must have undone the spells that bound you. Somehow you got out. Wormed your way into the chairman. Atiya isn’t the only ghost here. You have also returned.”
Returned to finish a three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old story.
“Most astute,” the priest said. “I’m impressed.”
In his long life, Ben had encountered possession before, some supernatural presence taking control of a corporeal body. During the Black Death he’d seen a small boy walking the Venetian plague pits, his boil-ridden body reanimated by an other-worldly force. In Victorian London he had sat in a darkened parlour, his hands linked to others around a table as some duchess or other made contact with the dead, messages falling from her rouged lips. And only the night before he had found himself adrift in an alien self, spinning through the mystic substance of the Queen, and met Khadra, a living, breathing foothold in the real world. Warm flesh made a handy vessel, willing or not.
He had another, more practical reason to reach his conclusion. Hints and shadows. Fragments of doubt. The pieces clicked together now, confronted by their architect.
“When I came to Paladin’s Court, there weren’t any guards on duty. You only had those stupid dogs. I thought the lack of security was down to conceit, the assumption that no Remnant would dare to enter the mansion. But that wasn’t right. You were waiting for me.”
I do know a thing or two about antiques. I’m practically one myself.
The old man had been taunting him all along.
“Oh, I knew you’d come calling, the minute you escaped the CROWS in New York. And come you did, blundering to London and into our little trap.”
“Baba Kamenwati.” The revelation made horrible sense. Ben could have laughed. “You’re a goddamned mummy.”
“I was.” Bardolfe – Kamenwati – wrinkled his nose at the term. Then he looked up, gazing into the deep blue sky, peering down the corridor of time. “Like I said, the man they buried in that tomb is a memory. My early days in the Karnak temple seem almost a dream, all tedious duty and devotion. But my prayers were not for the Neteru, only for one as downtrodden as I. The path of my destiny soon became clear. I established the jackal cult, drawing to me those begrudging of the gods, begrudging of their tyranny. In the darkest recesses of the temple, we, the righteous, performed our rituals, determined to restore Anubis to his throne.”
“Righteous.” Ben pulled a face. “Infants in the flames. Innocent hearts on altars of stone. That’s the way I heard it.”
Kamenwati shook his head, but he did not deny it. “One cannot summon the Lord of Death by anointing statues and burning incense. We required the purest essence of life, dispatching souls into the Duat with many incantations. And yet we were ignored.” Ben let the priest speak, suppressing his disgust in the hope of finding a chink in his armour, a way through the sorcerous shield. “When I heard about the wondrous land in the south, that Hatshepsut planned to visit Punt herself, I beseeched my master, the First Prophet of Amun, to send me as her spiritual guide. A sailor had spoken of magic and miracles. A great star falling from the sky, powerful enough to lay a kingdom to waste. While all of Egypt marvelled and feared, I dreamt of the distant south, hoping to find the necessary tools to gain the jackal god’s attention.
“But how could I have dreamt of this serpent Queen?” Kamenwati looked up at Atiya, her massive snout stretched out before him, her nostrils flaring in slumber. He could not hide his admiration. “A serpent, I thought, who might withstand the power of the gods. Seeing my chance, I drew on all the sorcery I knew and fashioned the Crook and the Pschent. You see how these treasures are truly mine? Even so, I was afraid. My desires had yet to bear fruit and I believed I could advance them through the Queen. Our burgeoning love had softened her heart and promised me a kingdom.”
“Yeah. You’re a real romantic. You sent Atiya into that crater alone. She faced the Star of Eebe and never came out the same.”
“No. She came out stronger,” Kamenwati said. “Able to command the very skies. To save her land and her people. She did not regret her decision. Has she told you otherwise?”
The stone changed me, Atiya had told him on the mountainside. Changed me for ever.
“She regretted her blindness. Her trust in you.”
“Then she should have shared my ambitions. Her own were troublingly dull.” Kamenwati spoke of regret like an alien concept. He certainly seemed to feel none himself. “Duty returned me to Karnak. For several years, Egypt traded with Punt. It was all so material. All so mundane. All so prone to the dust of ages, when the two great realms could have formed the most powerful empire on earth.”
“Under the reign of your jackal god. With you in control. It’s not exactly original.”
Kamenwati conceded this point with a bow of his head. “It’s true that my ambition now seems weak. It lacked a certain completion. Back then, greed alone returned me over the ocean to Punt. Our rituals in Karnak had not gone unnoticed. Rumours stirred. Suspicions arose. It was time to do or die. In Atiya’s palace, I again pledged my loyalty. We drank wine. Made love. And I taught Atiya the game of senet, all the while advancing my pieces over her authority, her banal acts, her trivial boons. The Star had granted her untold power, the Crook and the Pschent the means to control it, and what did this great queen do? Harnessed the clouds to water the crops. Healed the tribes and herds of cattle. With the gift of the heavens in her hands, the Queen was no more than a rustic goddess, a household deity trifling away the chance for dominion. But I was not without purpose.”
Ben, who had seen the result of that purpose, curled his lips in a sneer.
“You murdered Atiya. Stole her regalia.”
Kamenwati held up a finger, a white exclamation point. “And I paid the price! In the end I was as blind as the Queen, albeit not with love. Across the sea I fled, returning to Egypt with the sole intent of summoning Anubis to commence his reign here on earth. Deep in the Karnak temple, I uttered spells from the Book of the Dead and made my offerings. The door to the Duat remained closed. You see, the Star was married to the Queen; the Crook and the Pschent forged only for her. Too late, I realised my error. I could not control their power. Fire lashed out, licking the walls, licking the halls and chambers of Karnak. Burning my mortal flesh. Alerted by my incantations, the Pharaoh sent her guards to the temple. The High Priest bound me in curses and prayers. As the radiance faded from the Star, I found myself in chains. A weak fool, driven half mad. All my efforts undone.”
“Half mad?”
Like a scorpion burrowing through sand, Kamenwati’s face crinkled and shifted, arrogance giving way to spite. Memory, it seemed, clung to him still, swimming up to hint at his true age. He looked at Ben, and Ben found he couldn’t look away, caught in his fathomless eyes.
“Hatshepsut devised such a ceremony for me. She insisted on all the rituals –
with several punitive differences. She oversaw the sem priests as they washed my body with palm wine and rinsed it with water from the Nile. The priests used no salt. Their purpose was not preservation, nor were their rites benevolent. My undertakers took up their des and cut deep into my side, removing my liver, my lungs, my stomach and bowels. These they placed in canopic jars. At the Pharaoh’s instruction, the priests plucked out my heart, still wet, still dripping, and burnt it in a brazier. I was never to enter the Duat, so why would I have need of it? The Pharaoh had decreed I would never leave the tomb. To that end, the priests placed the magic bricks, the four little demons, in the corners of the chamber, forbidding my ba an exit. A priest took a hook and thrust it up my nose, smashing the stuff of my brain and pulling the strings from my skull. There was no Opening of the Mouth ritual for me. I was never to eat or drink in the afterlife. Never again speak to my god. Never speak to Anubis.
“The Star had changed me too, you see. But where it had graced Atiya with power, it brought me only damnation. Hatshepsut was harsh. The main difference in my entombment was the fact that I still lived. Yes. You’re right to wince. Now you understand the mercy of the Lioness, the Woman Who Was King. I felt the blades slip under my skin, scraping against bone. I felt the organs inside me drawn out, like the guts of a fish. I felt the hook slide up my nose and—”
“I get the picture.” Ben swallowed, his gorge rising. “The Pharaoh didn’t take your betrayal lightly. What did you expect? A medal?” As much as the details repulsed him, he felt no sympathy, spitting his disdain. “You fucking deserved it.”
“Deserved?” Kamenwati moved forward, his gaunt face a challenge. “And who are you to judge me? You, who have turned your back on all of your kind, allowing them to fade from the earth, lulled into enchanted sleep. You, who have plodded through the ages in denial of yourself, sousing dragon fire in whiskey and whoring your talents to crooks.”
“I’ve made mistakes,” Ben said. “Unlike you, I’m not a monster.”
The irony of this wasn’t lost on him.
“We are all monsters,” Kamenwati said. “Perhaps we don’t like to think so, to admit we have the potential. But we are all capable of monstrosity. And all capable of godhood.”
Ben said nothing. He was tiring of this game, this sparring of wits. He longed to hurl himself through the shield, make the priest answer in a language he preferred, the language of tooth and claw…
“I lay there in the dark, clutching the Crook. Hatshepsut saw fit to bury it with me, a final, biting rebuke. Who knows what she did with the Star and the Pschent. Hid them in a hole as deep as mine? Consigned them to dust and history? The High Priest ordered the tomb sealed and I knew my disciples would never return, my dreams of empire lost. I lay there in the dark, my ba trapped, for three and a half thousand years.”
Ben was no stranger to longevity, but Kamenwati’s age was more than triple his own. Where he had spent his life in adventure – watching people come and go, all those flowers blooming and fading – the priest had spent his in the dark. Bodiless. Undead. Imprisoned in a private hell. And in the dark the shadow would have stayed, if not for Professor Winlock.
“Long enough to learn your lesson.” He jabbed a finger at the priest. “Instead, you’re making the same old mistake.”
Kamenwati opened his mouth to reply, but the wind roared up and smothered his words, grit washing over the feed tank. A couple of jets thundered by overhead, their noses spearing into the south. Their low passage shook the metal surface, leaving the priest’s hair crazed in their wake, white weeds weaving in the sun. Ben scanned the rockets under their wings, bulbous fruit ripe with destruction. He doubted that the jets would open fire, sending them all sky-high – the financial loss was surely too great – but he couldn’t bank on it. Time wasn’t on his side. Neither was luck. The jets arced into the blue, shrieking around to circle the site. Following their flight north-west, a low, billowing cloud in the distance announced the approach of tanks down the road, their heavy tracks churning up sand. Great. The cavalry had arrived.
Kamenwati looked unfazed. As the jets receded, he smoothed his errant hair.
“I have learnt much. Once Winlock had broken into my tomb, I drifted into the modern world, free, lost and alone. A ghost from the sands.”
No, there was no mummy. All we found was mud…Mud in the bottom of a cracked sarcophagus.
Ben frowned. Winlock would never know how wrong he’d been.
“Fortunately, some had sensed my return. Remnants less oblivious than you.”
“The CROWS.”
We heard a voice, calling in the dark…
Nan Nemain took this opportunity to speak up. “The Coven Royal has an ear for the dead.” The words sounded wrong on her lips, a violation of youth. “We were watching the signs. Biding our time. Didn’t we tell you that things change? We heard a voice in the darkness, calling, calling…A voice that promised us vengeance and power. Anarchy. Bloodshed. Revolution. A return to the authority of myth.” The little girl squeezed the doll, her hands around its neck. “The Three Who Are One answered the call. Soon enough, we drew Kamenwati into the glass and communed with the wisdom of ages. When the Cursed One learnt of our bonds, he showed us the road to our freedom.”
“You mean the road to Paladin’s Court. You used the slayer. Promised him my head.”
And now the suspicion in Ben’s heart blossomed into a grim certainty, Von Hart whispering in his ear. Once summoned, the Queen anchored herself in human flesh, but she isn’t quite…corporeal… Was it possible that the Three had performed a similar possession, securing the Lambton armour and sending it to the chairman of the Guild? And had Fulk been wearing the armour at the time, a living Trojan horse? The coven had delivered more than just a gift. They had delivered a soul, a soul squirming for a while inside a human vessel, a parasite, a spectral virus, using Fulk’s body as a stepping stone. Ben recalled the dead boy walking the plague pits. He recalled the duchess babbling with the voices of ghosts and he recalled Khadra, locked inside the mystic substance of the Queen. If he knew anything about possession at all, he was fairly sure that the art of transposing souls required some kind of physical contact, a ritualistic invitation, a wide-open door…Had the gift of the Lambton armour simply been intended to mask the presence of magic from the Guild, blind the chairman to his danger? Ben thought so. Once inside the mansion, Kamenwati must have leapt from Fulk’s body and into Maurice Bardolfe, evicting his soul like a penniless tenant. “You sent this ghoul inside Fulk’s body into the heart of the Guild.”
“Bardolfe became a living shabti. A vessel for the deceased,” the priest said. “His knowledge became my knowledge. His authority, my authority. His seat of power mine.”
And what better place to break the Lore? To undo the bindings of eight hundred years? Birthing chaos at the centre of things, spinning a web and sending out strands like puppet strings, making an African mother and child dance to the tune of rebellion. In her tomb, the Queen had slumbered. Elsewhere, her regalia had slumbered too, the Star, Crook and Pschent locked behind glass, dormant, impotent, dull. Kamenwati had wanted the relics, still craved their untold power. With Paladin’s Court secured, seized by the ancient dead, the CROWS had set their plan in motion. Through the hag Dhegdheer the Coven Royal had placed the location of the tomb and the means of summoning in human hands, and then the priest and the CROWS had simply waited, luring Atiya to the source of her rage: the man who had betrayed and killed her, left her realm to crumble into dust…
Ben realised then that the Queen had always intended to come here, to face down the man she had once loved. A ghost she might be, but Atiya’s power had apparently outweighed the desperation of a little girl, absorbed and utilised inside her. Flesh and blood as fuel for the physical, usurped by godly will. Had the Queen known all along that Kamenwati had risen? Ben thought so. Maybe that was what she’d been trying to tell him on the mountain. Maybe her bondage here was simply an echo of her earlier doom, hi
story repeating itself and coming full circle.
Nan smiled. Ben wished she wouldn’t.
“Final flourish,” she said. “Players bow. Curtain falls.”
Ben growled. His fist struck the shield again, a mallet sending sparks across the liquid surface. The barrier pulsed but did not give. The statues snarled stony-faced. The Queen slumbered on.
Kamenwati had lost interest in the conversation. He turned away and plucked a watch from the jacket of his pocket, a fancy one on a golden chain. Flicking the case open, he looked at the dial and then up at the sky. At the darkening sun.
“Well, we had some time to kill,” he said, ever the polite host. The wind was rising, scattering sand. “And now we have a world.”
TWENTY-THREE
A false dusk stole over the desert. Shadows stretched from the refinery, crawling through the pipework and into the sands. The tanks slowed as they reached the entrance to the plant, halting grumbling and helpless in the road, the long barrels of their guns painting silhouettes on the tarmac. The refinery bled, the air sour with sulphurous fumes. Oil glittered on the pipes and walls, a thick, lethal darkness. Oil pooled in the loading bays and car park, the Rolls-Royce blending with the ever-creeping spill, seemingly afloat on a slick black sea. As the jets circled overhead, birds rose in a cloud from the city skyline, confused by the dwindling afternoon. The wind blustered, a wash of grit and fumes, and a deep hush fell over the land.