Chasing Embers

by James Bennet

  A tank in the road below, keen for an oil-free target, moving or otherwise, took a chance and fired. Ben had dodged the barrage outside the museum, but this time he wasn’t so lucky. The shell punched through his right forearm and pierced a wing, shattering muscle, pinions and webbed flesh, fragments of bone spraying the air, blood splashing the complex. Blasted off course, he barrelled into a spin, crashing into the side of the tower. The column buckled, the noise of impact shooting up the funnel in a thick belch of smoke, but the structure held firm. He threw his remaining forearm over his snout, the top of the tank whirling up to meet him. With a grunt, he crash-landed, crushing a section of railings like tin foil and leaving a sixty-foot dent.

  The dust cleared. Skull ringing, Ben squinted across the tank at the cruciform priest.

  “You cannot deny me!” Kamenwati shrieked. “Come, Anubis. Come! Come and claim your prize!”

  Atiya snarled, wrestling with the chains. Her tail lashed out, its bladed length sweeping across the blood-smeared symbols and smashing into the pyramid of barrels. Ben watched in numb dismay as the stack gave way. Knocked from her pedestal, Rose tipped over and fell, her rope-bound form tumbling into the chaos and her hennin hat flying from her head. It hung for a moment, drifting in the gloom, and then fluttered downwards, lost from view.

  Kamenwati didn’t blink, his eyes glued to Atiya. He spoke a word. More of a symbol, really, hanging in the air. The Queen reared, growling, and then – vanished. Her black mass evanesced, weaving smokily up to the zenith of the dome, fanning out in thick, sooty wings, the unravelled substance of a goddess. The chains wove with her, Ben saw, rising from the tank like iron filings drawn by magnets, the glittering links snaking skyward, holding her essence captive.

  A girl sat cross-legged in the middle of the tank, revealed by the lifting darkness. Her bony limbs protruded from her T-shirt and football shorts, now no more than rags. Skin merging with the shadows, she was almost a part of the billowing brume.

  Khadra. The girl looked the same as she had in the Alps when Ben had fallen into the Queen, sinking into the spectral depths that were now blowing open before him. Her head was bowed, perhaps by exhaustion, perhaps by hunger. Perhaps by the weight of the Pschent on her head. The tall double crown shone in the gloom, the gleam of burnished silver. The cobra, ready to strike, coiled from the curving brim next to the emblem of the sharp-beaked bird – some lost, vulturine god – the symbols of divinity and rule reduced by the drooping head that bore them. Clutched loosely in one hand, Khadra pressed the Crook to her chest, a pose resembling the pharaohs of old. Inlaid hieroglyphics, sacred seals of command, wound around its ivory length. The Star of Eebe rested in her lap, the fist-sized gem that had started this business glowing with a soft white puissance.

  Kamenwati, high as a kite on the stuff of magic, shivered at the sight.

  “Come!”

  And the doors of the Duat opened.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  In the filthy streets of El-Arafa, the City of the Dead, a tremor shot through the ground. The eclipse had passed some minutes ago and the squalid district went about its business, reeking under the late noon sun. Children on the rubbish heaps, who had paused in their sifting to gaze up at the sky, shrugged and bent again to their task, pulling shabby clothes, broken chairs and dented cans from the collected muck. As the quake struck, the Zabbaleen cried out as one, jumping and sliding down the slopes of trash and heading for the shelter of the nearby streets. Running ahead, a teenage boy in a ragged kaftan ducked into an open tomb, standing under the lintel as his parents had taught him with dust peppering his hair. Tremors in Cairo were nothing new, but like his other slum-fellows – some of whom had ended up here as a direct result of the “powder keg” in 1992 – Hanif was never quite sure how bad they would be. Muttering to Allah, he gaped at the shuddering ground, searching for signs of riddling cracks, the sand shifting like chalk on a drum skin. Seeing nothing, he peered at the sky, and gasped at the growing darkness in the south. At first he thought it was a cloud bank, a storm moving in, but squinting harder, he saw that wasn’t right. It was as though some hand had peeled back the day, exposing the night underneath, a torn black triangle rising from behind the Mokattam Hills. None of the stars looked familiar.

  A cry distracted him. He glanced up the street, seeing a woman rush from her home – in truth a crooked mausoleum – her hands waving over her head and her lips stretched in a shriek. Hanif frowned. The woman was a fool to flee, especially from shelter, but then he saw the scrawny figure lurching from the doorway after her, rags aflutter in the stirred-up dust. It was too far away to make out the details, and as the tremor passed, rippling under his feet, Hanif staggered back into the tomb, the cool gloom embracing him.

  Something cold gripped his shoulder. He turned, startled, and stared into a withered skull. Wormy eyes regarded him. Yellow teeth chattered. In the confusion, he hadn’t heard the lid of the tomb sliding open or the thing inside it climbing out. As the dank walls trembled around him, no one heard the boy scream.

  Cairo rumbled. Police busied everywhere. Wild reports of a terrorist attack, coupled with the insane babble about giant flying beasts and the awe of the passing eclipse, had turned the day into a circus. What now? merchants asked in the Khan el-Khalili, fanning themselves and sucking on tall, ornate hookahs, their assorted wares, carpets, jewellery and spices, starting to dance on the stalls before them. At Tahrir Square, taxi drivers echoed them, complaining to sweaty tourists in the back of their cabs. As if the riots aren’t bad enough, they said. What now? What next? In the hubbub and under the smog, no one mentioned the darkness in the south, the strange narrow fissure in the sky. From the city, the sight could pass for a column of smoke, and in the throbbing confusion, thinking otherwise was perhaps too much, the spectacle put down to a fire or a sandstorm. What a day, women said to each other on the shivering streets. Ah, me. What a day.

  The Museum of Antiquities was closed to the public. The army had cordoned off the Wasim Hasan, the road leading past the grand red building, and traffic on the Nile Corniche moved at a snail’s pace, backed up, grumbling and cautious. The museum, recently the scene of gunfire and mayhem, was now an oasis of calm. Soldiers still occupied the building, a skeleton crew with machine guns slung over their shoulders, smoking cigarettes near the ruined displays as they waited for further orders. The rotunda was cool and quiet, sunlight shafting through holes in the dome, sparkling on the antiquated wreckage. Considering the noise on the streets outside, the soldiers breathed a collective sigh of relief. Now that the gas had dispersed, the hallucinations faded (and by God, what a show!), they guessed they were the lucky ones. At least they weren’t out there directing traffic, and no one had given them specific instructions to clean up the mess. On the benches in the gallery, inspecting the atrium statues or sauntering down the pillared porticoes, the soldiers patrolled the museum with all the languor of a daily coach party.

  On the first floor, halfway down the corridor leading into the west wing, Private Farid slouched against the wall by a crumbling boat, the Fourth Dynasty artefact set behind a stretch of elastic rope. He was bored, and his younger comrade, Private Banna, was out of cigarettes. There wasn’t much reason to talk, but it was still a preferable state to being outside, marching in the sefi heat and dust (Farid knew that the break wouldn’t last long; these days, Cairo was as volatile as tear gas). So when he heard the racket coming from further down the corridor, an odd, insistent rattling and banging, his spine was straight and his gun in his hand in a matter of seconds. Banna, his startled mirror, followed suit. Farid frowned, circling his hand. This way. A few steps into the wing to investigate and the walls started to shake. Dislodged bricks clattered down around them, the floor juddering and jumping like a washing machine on spin. A mosaic of cracks spread across the smooth marble, the corridor skewing out of shape. Farid shouted something at Banna. The sense of it was lost in the clamour, but his flapping hand spelt out earthquake and his eyes went wide for
the nearest shelter, a shadowed archway on their left.

  The two men ducked under it as a section of the ceiling came down, plaster dust shrouding the scene. Farid clung to the abutment like a passenger on a runaway train, watching Banna fumble to do the same, the younger man pale and gibbering. When the tremors subsided, passing under his feet and into the city, it took Farid a moment to notice, because the uproar continued behind him, a hollow-sounding din turning the space into an echo chamber. He turned, stiffened, and took a small step backward, then tapped Banna on the shoulder. Banna followed his direction, staring speechless through the archway into the dimly lit room. An acrid odour hit Farid’s nostrils, and it wasn’t the smell of Banna’s piss. The mummy cases lining the walls rumbled and shook, bumping against each other and the walls behind them, a tantrum of ancient wood and paint. Even the cases that had fallen to the floor appeared in an agitated state, a rustling and banging coming from inside them. Farid gawped at Banna. Banna warbled something in reply. A sound like knives dragged down slate drew Farid’s attention back to the hubbub and the smashed glass coffin in the middle of the room.

  The corpse inside it, brown, desiccated, withered, was struggling to rise, its skeletal hands scrabbling for purchase on the sides of the case. Its rags fell away in a cloud as it stood, exposing a hollow ribcage. Frayed skin, pickled ages ago and holding the sheen of worn leather, drifted in flakes to the ground. With a creak that Farid heard despite the ruckus, the corpse turned its face toward him, its mouth stretched wide in a silent scream.

  The tremors spread out, roaring under the city and into the sands.

  To the east of Cairo, dust and scree trickled and bounced down the crumbling flanks of the Pyramids of Giza. Camels brayed and bolted, some of the beasts bearing tourists, others struggling to join them. Bedouins fought with the thrashing reins, their robes and keffiyeh fluttering in the haze. Tour guides yelled at their panicked parties, and people in sunhats and Bermuda shorts dropped their cameras and phones to the dusty floors of the mortuary temples like bizarre modern-day offerings. The Great Sphinx, with its scarred, eroded face, gazed blankly over the necropolis, watching a babbling mass of people flee from the mastabas and rock-cut tombs, their awe usurped by fear.

  And deep, deep under the sands, in glittering vaults yet undiscovered, casket lids budged and shifted, bones clicked for the first time in centuries, and sockets that had once held eyes blindly searched the fathomless dark.

  Ben looked up at the fissure in the sky, a smouldering wound revealing slow, smudged stars, tapering to a point above the East Katameya Oil Refinery. Energy cupped the top of the feed tank, shimmering, invisible, and all around him lay a frozen darkness, the area prised from the Cairene afternoon like a bubble in the river of time. On the horizon, the syzygy, a ring of gold around depthless black, seemed pinned to the velvet night.

  Khadra sat with the Crook and the Star in her lap, the Pschent atop her head. The essence of the Queen, a tethered nebula, churned and billowed above her. Something moved in the drifts, Ben saw, a vague, gargantuan form emerging from the egress, the levitating chains parting. Kamenwati had opened up Atiya like a door, a portal into the Duat, and now, with the Guild outfoxed and the Sola Ignis lying wounded, the priest knelt in supplication.

  His prayers had found their answer.

  I HAVE COME.

  The voice was in the air, but also of it, drawn from the stolen night. Sepulchral tones ached in Ben’s bones, grinding in his skull, words as foreign and forgotten as the Queen’s, but which he grasped, nevertheless, his mind touched by the empyreal, the language of the gods. Still, it hurt. The voice above him would put birds to flight, send worms wriggling deeper underground. Ben wanted to curl up and hide, huddle under his broken wing and forget the tragedy skewering his heart. To sleep meant death, but there was comfort in the thought, a surrender to the inevitable. He had failed Rose. Death seemed a fitting reward. He was weak. He’d sustained so much damage. He was healing slowly, too slowly. He lay on the doorstep, a bloody lump of scales and horns, reduced to raw meat like his woman and his seed, a meal for the entity summoned by the priest.

  Dazed, numb, he peered up at the giant figure emerging from the gulf. He made out a humanoid torso and limbs, mahogany black and smooth as pearl. Arm bracelets and a banded collar glinted in the shadows, clasped around bulging sinews and a vast, bull-like neck. A striped headdress and dangling pendants, both the size of a small boat, adorned the giant’s head. A canine snout, long and slender, protruded from the wavering breach, sniffing out the one who called him. His pointed ears curved up to the stars, and Ben suspected they would miss nothing – the sound of an infant’s birth cry or a geriatric’s last gasp. The visitant’s eyes, deep-set, ageless slits, reflected the genuflecting priest like dull ruby mirrors.

  There was no mistaking his identity. In the past week, Ben had heard his name on lips both mortal and divine, seen him depicted in statues and paintings more times than he cared to recall. Kamenwati, with his spells, his offerings and choosing of this hour, had succeeded in summoning his master.

  Anubis, the jackal god. Anubis, the Judge of the Dead.

  MY SERVANT. WHAT DO YOU WANT OF ME?

  The question boomed across the tank, resounding from a place far beyond the earth, beyond time, beyond life. A place where the gods slumbered in forgotten deeps. Kamenwati, crouched in his circle of blood, sucked in a steady breath. His shoulders tensed and his hands closed into fists. Ben watched a smile spread across his lips, a slow, humourless rictus, and when the priest looked up, there was nothing submissive in his face.

  SPEAK. OR SPEAK NO MORE.

  The priest stood. The witch, Nan, drew closer to his side – perhaps in unease, perhaps in expectation, Ben couldn’t tell. Above them, the strengthening form of the god, this lord of the Neteru, gazed down in grim impatience, his huge snout jutting from the underworld, the threshold of the Duat. The portal belched a soupy darkness, a cascade of fog carpeting the ground. Still the priest did not speak, his gaunt features an arrogant mask. Ben held his breath, waiting to hear some final appeal, some feverish plea that would damn them all.

  Instead, Kamenwati dropped his gaze to the girl in the middle of the tank. He muttered something, a whispered command, the meaning swallowed by the distance. In response, Khadra sat up, her straightening spine showing like a zipper through her thread-bare T-shirt. She raised her head, her neck veins popping with the weight of the Pschent, the tall double crown dwarfing her body. Her face remained slack, her eyes unseeing. A thin line of drool trickled from her lips, and her arms jerked, her shoulders twitched, her movements stiff and unnatural.

  Ben winced, sensing what was coming next.

  “Imminka,” the priest said. Now.

  Khadra raised the Crook. She placed its tip, an almost-but-not-quite circle, on the top of the gem in her lap. The diamond burst into life, silvery splinters blasting out, accompanied by a musical scream, the shrill song of the void. Ben’s claws went to his ears as the Star bored into his brain, threatening to incinerate thought. Ozone cut through the stench of oil, curdling with the spill from the toppled barrels and the taste of blood in his throat. Clinging to consciousness, he saw the halo of light coalesce into a single bolt, crackling across the tank. He cringed as lightning spewed into the heights, penetrating the portal.

  “Ha!”

  Kamenwati’s cry joined with the shriek of the stone. He stood, silhouetted in his tux, his hair wild and his arms weaving. Like a puppet on ghostly strings, Khadra echoed his movements; the bolt from the Star harnessed and steered by his splayed white gloves.

  Anubis roared, berating the frozen eclipse. In the collision of shadow and sparks, the god raised a staff that would fell trees, the shaft crowned by a large looped cross – an ankh, the Ancient Egyptian symbol of life. He flung out his arms, attempting to stave off the blazing assault, but the Star was not so easily repelled. The diamond burned with the touch of spellbound ivory, its voracious appetite spurred by the Crook. T
he god’s staff shattered in two, glittering fragments spinning in the void, the hulking figure snarling and recoiling. Manifest in fangs of light, the hunger of the Star sank into dark and gleaming flesh, feeding on divinity.

  Kamenwati shrieked, drunk on magic. Whatever the Star’s life-changing powers, the only transformation that mattered to the priest was as clear and bright as the pummelling lightning. The mechanics of the spell had simply been a ruse. Atiya, the doorway, and Rose, the lure. Smoke and mirrors. Bait. All along, the priest had set his sights on a far greater prize than devotion and subservience. His prayers unanswered, his offerings ignored and his ba consigned to the dark for millennia, his faith had soured and grown bitter – fermenting into vengeance. This was his final sacrilege, his last act of rebellion. Kamenwati meant to overthrow death.

  The consequences would spell disaster. To kill a god was to become one. Even an idiot knew that. With the Star in his grasp, the priest would usurp a throne in the Duat and challenge the ancient and faded power of the Neteru. Ben’s original quest seemed trite now, blown into ruinous proportions. If Kamenwati succeeded, it was sayonara for all of them. Forget the Guild. Forget the Lore. Forget the Remnants. Forget life. Kamenwati had named himself Death and now advanced to seal the deal. Outside the shield, Ben could do nothing to stop him. To shut out the priest and the ambushed god came as a blessed relief, an end to all quests, to stupid dreams. Rose was gone, and with her his strength, his will to resist. The fierce light, the bellowing giant and the gleeful shrieks would all go spinning like grains of sand through the hourglass, falling into a deep and blameless silence…