That Is Not Dead Read online

  “You can destroy Thoth?” Kamose repeated. His tone held a deep, avid craving.

  “Ah! This matters more to you than your incinerated pate. Hatred. I like that.”

  “Wait, manifold one. Thoth is only one of Khem’s gods. To the others he is of importance—their scribe, record keeper, vizier, and lord of magic. Nor would it escape them that whosoever can destroy one might destroy the rest. What of Amun-Ra, the greatest of gods? You declare that you can annihilate Thoth with your left hand and Anubis with your right. Can you do as much to the Hidden One?”

  “Be careful, archpriest. You begin to disappoint me.” The silkiness of N’yarlat-hotep’s tone was exquisite. “You know as well as I that Amun was nothing but a silly little goose-god of Thebes until the princes of that city rose to power. They toppled the Foreign Lords. They assumed the Double Crown. You yourself were named after one of them. Then Amun became the mighty ram, Lord of the Thrones of the World, and was given the attributes of the sun so that he is now designated Amun-Ra. As he waxed, so he can decline, which all man-made gods do. Your patron Anubis can usurp his greatness and his temples both, if such is your pleasure. I should have no objection. I can employ the likeness of the jackal, as well as any other lineaments.”

  That had been slipshod, from a preternatural being or any other kind, and it confirmed what Kamose had learned of the Black Pharaoh. He had a failing that closely resembled one great human weakness: vanity, a delight in theater. The jackal-headed apparition that had given Kamose a fistful of arrows was not Anubis but an impostor.

  Kamose barked a bitter laugh. It might have issued from the jaws of a jackal itself. “My patron has already visited me to apprise me of your coming, O Black Pharaoh. Archers! Enter!”

  Three tall Kushite bowmen, with their formidable weapons strung, answered his summons, stepping in past screens that servitors lifted aside. Each man aimed an ebon shaft with a broad silver head at the slim young form confronting Kamose. Each carried two other arrows thrust into the cincture around his leopard-skin kilt. N’yarlat-hotep stood still, looking from one bowman to the next.

  “You should not have come back to Khem,” the Archpriest of Anubis said in a voice as soft as it was dire. “You underestimate its gods.”

  The square of ornate cedar screens, eighteen to a side, which surrounded the priest, the demon, and the archers, began changing its shape as the menials’ hands rearranged them from behind. In a commendably brief space of time, the square had become a precise nonagon. The Black Pharaoh paid no attention. His regard, fixed on the archpriest, held weary contempt.

  “I have wasted my time.”

  The square of screens outside the inner square began to alter in its turn as busy hands shifted them likewise. One screen was removed, leaving ninety-one, and these became a regular heptagon with thirteen screens on each side. The outermost, largest square was being dismantled even before the seven-sided shape within it was complete.

  “You have wasted more than time,” Kamose assured his dark visitor. To the archers he snapped, “Shoot.”

  Without hesitation, they drew their black shafts to their ears and loosed them. Three broad silver arrowheads drove through the youth’s body, transfixing him. He lurched but did not fall. Three more arrows skewered his form, and while he spat blood, he followed it with a cachinnated laugh. The air seemed to splinter like glass.

  “Indeed, you disappoint me, and indeed I have wasted time. You fatuous fool! I, N’yarlat-hotep, came to you in the form of your divinity, the jackal. It was I who gave you those arrows and told you they could slay me! It was a test and you have failed it.”

  The ebon arrow-shafts smoked, flamed, and vanished. The silver heads fell ringing to the floor. N’yarlat-hotep laughed again, and three courageous Kushite bowmen shuddered. But the cedar screens never toppled.

  The outermost square, which consisted of thirty screens to a side, reformed as a decagon, concentric with the other shapes within, and the work was finished.

  “I failed it? The worse for me,” Kamose said. “And what now?”

  “You perish, of course. I might dispense you an ingenious fate, but that is more than you merit, despite your overblown repute. A vulture’s shape and a vulture’s life-span will suffice. Farewell.”

  “I am more liberal. A somewhat ingenious fate is what I bestow. Hza benigareth num thuu dzaidarinamb vuldarph!”

  At that resounding cantrip—spoken in a language that had been forgotten among men while the Libyan Desert was fertile savannah and glaciers still covered the Amber Trail, and which no man of Egypt should have been able to pronounce aright—N’yarlat-hotep showed astonishment.

  “I have learned, in my time, things that were not contained in the Scrolls of Thoth,” Kamose said. “You are strangely vulnerable to some rather simple configurations of geometry, O Black Pharaoh. And we in Khem are known for our skill in measurement and surveying. Farewell.”

  A canopy of numerous sides and facets descended from the ceiling on cords. It touched the triple barrier of screens and halted. To the shaken archers and even to Kamose, it remained a mere linen awning stretched over a complex frame. But to N’yarlat-hotep it became a dreary, depthless gray sky—sunless, holding multitudes of stars dim with the tarnish of age. The walls of the chamber of divination faded from his perception. Around him now stretched a far landscape of gritty sand, banded gray and buff, with crags of corroded rock jutting through it. Far off, surrounded by devastation, stood a misshapen, liver-colored mountain that seemed wholly foreign to the landscape. It might have been a fallen planetoid.

  Nearby, he saw toppled, broken stones, which even in their ruin denoted an architecture of bizarre proportions. Thick, unwholesome lichen blotched the stones, and between them lay a scummy gray tarn. Something large and sluggish with three bulbous eyes drank stertorously at the marge. When it became aware of N’yarlat-hotep, it turned its massive head, coroneted with spines, to regard him with a kind of unhurried hunger.

  He had been tricked—and by a man. The knowledge excruciated his conceit. More, he had been dismissed into a realm from which, even for him, it would be onerous and lengthy to find his way back to more congenial regions. As he deliberated, other factors of his situation grew clearer. While he could not be destroyed, even here, he could not assume any other shapes either until he had perished in his current one. That advance toward a moribund state was likely to be protracted and to involve intense discomfort.

  His craving for vengeance found expression in a high, hellish scream.

  When his frenzy calmed somewhat, and he pondered returning to Khem, new frustrations were borne in upon N’yarlat-hotep. The “configurations of geometry” Kamose had mentioned—the nine-sided figure, the seven-sided, and the decagon—had involved temporal as well as spatial aspects. Could that primitive Egyptian priest have any inkling that space and time were one? Impossible! And yet he had boasted of learning things that were not contained in the Scrolls of Thoth …

  Nine by seven by ten. Six hundred and thirty. He was barred from returning to Khem for that span of years.

  He raised a convulsing face to the dull glitter of those ancient stars and screamed once more in hideous fury.

  In his mansion on the edge of the desert, Kamose allowed himself certain tremors of relief. He had taken risks to more than his corporeal life with the being known as the Crawling Chaos, the Black Pharaoh, and N’yarlat-hotep. He was victorious, but thoughts of what might have occurred brought him such inquietude that he broached a jar of his strongest wine, drank deeply, and became more forthcoming than was his wont. One of his greenest subordinate priests, a youth of royal blood named Amenufer, enjoyed the resulting revelations. So did his major-domo, a eunuch named Rahen, a blandly cynical creature with a taste for sorcery and horror.

  “The demon dared ape the form of great Anubis, holy one? It dared?”

  “Yes.”

  There had been small daring involved. N’yarlat-hotep’s brags of greater power than all Khe
m’s gods had belike been warranted. Certain hidden writings even held an assertion that N’yarlat-hotep, not Set, had been the slayer of Osiris, stifling the god in an ornate coffin by pouring molten lead across the cover. After Isis restored him to life, N’yarlat-hotep slew him again, more thoroughly, hewing his body apart and tossing the phallus to crabs, making him a gelded specter in mummy’s swathing. This, however, Kamose forbore from saying aloud. It might have shocked even Rahen.

  “It could not fool you! Did it not know? Why, you have served the Lord of Tombs too long!”

  It was Amenufer, the naïve scholar and would-be magician, who blurted this out. Kamose contained his irritation. Amenufer had that effect on him often. He reminded Kamose overmuch of the callow dolt the archpriest had been long before. Because of the young man’s royal kinship, Kamose endured him. Someday, no doubt, he would be archpriest of a temple himself. His subordinates and the god would both need patience.

  “I have. The Opener of the Ways manifests himself to me only in dreams or through auguries. Never directly in his own person—or never yet. Besides, the demon made a crasser error. He appeared to me with a jackal’s lower legs. The Lord of Tombs has a man’s legs and feet. Thus, I knew it was not he from the first.”

  Rahen the eunuch said fawningly, “He offered you power unrivaled in the Two Lands. Many would have accepted it, holy one.”

  “Power in a realm without stability, with Ma’at dead. All principle and virtue aside, how long would it take him to discard me? I could not trust him. None could ever trust him.” Kamose shrugged, his expression turning toward melancholy. “Besides, in my restless youth I traveled widely, from Mycenae in the west to far Babylon in the east. Those wanderings taught me the truth of the belief held by the most ignorant stay-at-homes in Khem. There is no land fit for habitation but this. No water but Nile water can quench an Egyptian’s thirst.”

  He listened to himself maundering and stopped in disgust.

  N’yarlat-hotep might have been dismissed for nine times seven decades, but he remained a sly trickster of many resources. His conceit had been affronted. He would surely make a new attempt on Egypt before the imposed time had passed, if he could find a way. Kamose knew that he must be extraordinarily careful when next he sought to summon a spirit or demon. He had better make very sure it was the one he desired, and not the Crawling Chaos in some new subtle guise. Even he dreaded what that being would do if it contrived to reach the archpriest again.

  He prayed then—to the gods in whom he placed no faith—that he would be dead first.

  City of Banebdjed – Mendes

  Hikuptah – Memphis

  Usermare – Rameses II

  Abdu – Abydos

  Mesopotamia, Second Millennium BC:

  What a Girl Needs

  Esther N. Friesner

  It was another hot, sunny day in Uruk—a day like countless others. Shagshag woke, sat up from her improvised bed in the lee of Inanna’s temple, and rubbed grit out of her eyes. Her mouth felt as though lizards had used it for unspeakable purposes. Given the length of time she’d been in residence on temple property and the boldness of the local reptile population, this was as likely to be straightforward reporting of the facts as metaphor.

  With a heartfelt sigh, she got to her feet and stretched her scrawny limbs, greeting yet another day of boredom and humiliation. At least she was used to the humiliation.

  “G’morning, Shagshag.” A temple guard strolled past, smiling pleasantly. He was one of the older men—a fatherly sort and rather sympathetic. “Sleep well?”

  “Well enough,” she said, returning his smile with one that was a halfhearted, shabby thing. Somehow she just couldn’t muster anything better. The guard took notice.

  “Now, now. Don’t you look so miserable, darlin’,” he said with many a compassionate click of his tongue. “Keep hope alive, there’s a good girl. Remember, you never know when the goddess will touch a man so he looks past the surface of…” His voice trailed away. A look of embarrassment overcame him as he realized what his words implied.

  Shagshag sighed again, inwardly this time. Poor fellow. He means well, she thought. It’s not his fault I’ve got a complexion that makes mud glow by comparison, hair so coarse and dull that there’s not enough oil from here to the Euphrates to make it soft and shiny, and one eye that keeps trying to see what the other one’s doing. And those are my good points!

  She forced a grin that revealed small, dull teeth of varying hues. “You’re right, of course,” she replied, speaking quickly in order to relieve the kindly guard of his discomfiture as soon as possible. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got the feeling that today’s going to be my lucky day.”

  “Of course it will be, darlin’. Of course it will.” The guard bobbed his head much too enthusiastically and moved on, but not before Shagshag spied the raw pity in his eyes.

  He was not the only one of the temple employees to regard her so. When she’d first arrived within Inanna’s precincts, she observed the same expression on many faces, particularly among the older folk. The high priestess to whom she’d originally presented herself on that long-gone day greeted the ungainly girl with a motherly smile until Shagshag explained that no, she had not come to deliver an offering, but rather to …

  “Serve the goddess before I’m married.”

  The priestess’ benevolent smile crumpled. She made a sound like a dog dealing with an especially splintery chicken bone.

  “Er, you have? Really? And who is the lucky young man awaiting you?” she asked, her words tremulous with misgiving.

  “Oh, no one specific,” Shagshag replied in an offhanded manner. “Not yet. But my stepmother assures me that as soon as I’ve fulfilled my duty to the goddess, she and Daddy will have so many suitors coming after me that they’ll have to get in line.”

  “Is that so?” The priestess gnawed her lower lip in thought. “My dear child, might I ask your father’s name.”

  Shagshag provided the information readily. A spark of thorough-going comprehension kindled in the older woman’s eyes. Shagshag’s father was one of the most successful merchants in Uruk, and hence one of the wealthiest. Upon the death of his first wife, a horde of lithe young ladies with a taste for the good life had begun aggressively flirting with the aged widower. The winner was rumored to have employed certain questionable skills to advance her case—things one could only learn from Egyptians. Egyptians, of all things! Whether she’d learned the more advanced techniques of passion or poison mattered not. She took the prize. The lavish wedding that followed her triumph was still jabbered about in tones of awe.

  Another lass would have settled down to savor the plush aftermath of victory, but apparently Shagshag’s new stepmother was not one for leaving any pesky loose ends in play.

  “I suppose you’re lucky the little bitch didn’t try poisoning you to get you out of the way,” the priestess muttered.

  “What did you say, holy one?” Shagshag inquired. Her attempt at a quizzical look was stymied by the fact that you cannot raise one of your eyebrows in perplexity when a single brow is all you’ve got.

  “Nothing, dear. Nothing. Please come in. Pick out a nice place in the temple courtyard. You do know the procedure, don’t you?”

  Shagshag nodded eagerly. “I sit in the temple courtyard and the first man who tosses payment into my lap claims me. We unite in service to the goddess, and after that I get to go home so Daddy can let everyone know I’m ready for marriage. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  “Indeed.”

  It was a mercy that the still-hopeful girl could not read the priestess’ thoughts. And once you’re ready for marriage, no doubt you’ll have plenty of suitors coming after your father’s wealth. Your wedding will be costly, your dowry generous. And because you are the man’s only child, your father will heap additional largesse upon you, your husband, and your new household. To say nothing of how he’ll open both hands when you present him with his first grandchild! All of which wil
l take away from the bounty that calculating stepmother of yours wants for herself.

  Most of our eligible men live unwittingly, their loins overruling their logic. If they were a brighter bunch, one of them would realize that wedding you means being set for life! He’d have begun courting you already; you’d tell him about coming here to serve the goddess; he’d follow, toss a few bits of bronze or even a nubbin of silver into your lap, and marry you as soon thereafter as possible!

  But by sending you here before any man shows an interest in your father’s fortune, your stepmother’s played the game neatly. How many lads would ever recognize you or know who your father is? Here you’re just another girl, waiting to serve Inanna—just another homely girl, at that. Poor child, I fear you’re here to stay.

  The priestess struggled and failed to keep a look of pity from taking over her face, but Shagshag was too caught up in the excitement of her pending prenuptial experience to give this more than cursory notice. “May I recommend that wall?” The priestess gestured to the most crowded part of the temple courtyard. The place teemed with young women and the men who’d come to browse the goods. “It casts a nice bit of shade most times of day, and if you end up being here any appreciable length of time, such conveniences are worth everything.”

  Shagshag looked dubious. “It’s kind of loud and busy,” she remarked. “And I can’t see any empty spots.”

  “If you stay close to the prettiest girls, you’ll find a place soon enough,” the priestess counseled her.

  Even as she spoke, there was a bustle of activity as an especially lovely maiden was besieged by men who jostled for the opportunity to pitch the goddess’ tribute into her lap. The confusion was such that one gentleman with poor aim inadvertently wound up claiming a plain-faced girl who’d set up camp next to the beauty. The look of joy and relief on the accidentally chosen young woman’s face was almost as intense as the expression of horror and resignation on her clumsy swain’s face. With a loud sigh, a fatalistic shrug, and a halfhearted gesture for her to follow him, he trudged away. The girl scampered after him, beaming.