Chapter 1 #2
Sitamun sat up and slapped his hand away.
“I’m fine!” she announced. After a few deep breaths, she continued.
“That monster put your heart into his own chest, and it…it healed him. Wove his body back together like threads on a loom—most of it, at least. I thought he would find me and kill me too, but he left. When I finally got up the courage to come out, I saw you, and…” The next words were choked with emotion.
“I didn’t know what to do. You were dead, and I was all alone.
So I started wrapping you in your robes, to bury you, but then a blue amulet fell out of your pocket. ”
The scarab amulet from Setnakht’s tomb, Karim thought.
“It had a message on one side written in the gods’ words,” Sitamun went on.
“This is the heart of a king.” I read it, and something came over me.
It was as if I suddenly understood what I needed to do, like I’d been possessed by some kind of spirit.
” She shook her head. “I’m not explaining this very well. ”
“Keep going, sena,” Karim urged.
“I told you that the kingdom still needed you. I told you to come back.”
Karim shivered, the hazy memory of her command reverberating through his body.
“And then I put the amulet inside your chest.”
Karim lurched backward. “You what?”
Sitamun looked up at him, her eyes haunted.
“That stone was a heart,” she explained. “Or at least, it had the potential to be. The word is the deed, remember? From my lips to the gods’ ears. Somehow, by saying it, I made it happen. I made it true.”
Karim touched his chest with a trembling hand.
He didn’t want to believe it. But the scarab-shaped scar, the heaviness in his chest, and the supernatural lightness of his body forced him to accept what the princess was saying.
He felt good, too good. He had enough energy to climb out of the valley and race to the horizon, to swim straight across the river, to fight a dozen men with his bare hands—and yet there was a burden on his soul that frightened him.
Suddenly, he felt like a trapped animal.
“What did you do to me? What did your Khetaran magic turn me into?” he asked.
Sitamun’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? I saved your life! You haven’t changed. You’re still you!” Then she focused on his eyes and grew pale. “Aren’t you?”
Karim half growled, half shouted something unintelligible and began to pace. “Just like a Khetaran, hey? You want something, you take it. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I didn’t want…whatever this is? That I didn’t want to come back?”
The princess stood to face him. She wore a simple white dress that clung to her curves in a way that would have been distracting if Karim hadn’t been so mad.
“Unbelievable!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “You go on and on about this oracle and how it’s our destiny to save the kingdom, and then when you’re brutally murdered and by some miracle I bring you back—this is the thanks I get?”
Instantly they were both yelling at each other.
Karim told the princess exactly what he thought of her and her cursed, nonsensical kingdom, and Sitamun used some particularly colorful language—including comparisons to a variety of farm animals and assorted vermin—to describe what she thought of him.
They were shouting at each other, red-faced and gesticulating wildly, when a dog barked.
Sitamun froze.
Whatever insult Karim had been about to volley next never left his lips. He turned to see a pointy-eared shadow rising from behind one of the boulders nearby.
“Behkai?”
At the sound of his master’s voice, the big black dog came galloping toward them. He crashed into Karim at full speed, his tail a blur of motion, his massive paws planted on Karim’s shoulders as he licked his face with unbridled joy.
“Ugh! Behkai! Stop!” Karim cried, trying and failing to push away the amorous snout. “I know, I know. I’m alive! I, too, am surprised!”
Panting and drooling, Behkai then directed his affections to the princess, licking and nuzzling her hand.
“What a good boy,” she said, bending to kiss him on the head.
“Hmph,” Karim grumbled. “She gets the royal treatment, I get assaulted.” He squinted at the dog. A patch of white fur in the shape of a man’s hand covered the left side of Behkai’s face. Even his eye had turned a cloudy, blue-white color. “What’s that?”
“Behkai tried to protect you and the monster touched him,” Sitamun replied. “A burn, perhaps?”
“Doesn’t seem to hurt him,” Karim said as he gently stroked the white mark. The dog squeezed his eyes in pleasure, pushing his head against Karim’s hand. “Been through a lot, haven’t you, boy?”
“We all have,” Sitamun said.
Karim gazed up at her, saw the pain in her eyes, and sighed. The anger had gone out of him.
The princess bit her lip, then asked, “Why wouldn’t you want to come back?”
Karim ran a hand through his curly brown hair.
“I didn’t have to face the consequences of my actions if I was dead.
Now I do. That is more curse than blessing.
Already I have the deaths of two innocents on my conscience.
Who knows how many more there will be?” He stabbed his chest with one finger.
“It was my heart that gave Setnakht life! Mine! Whatever disaster comes, comes because of me! Do you have any idea what that’s like? ”
Sitamun’s nostrils flared, and Karim remembered everything she had confided in him. The death of the little girl. The murder of her father. The twisted machinations of her brother and his rise to the Khetaran throne. And Sitamun’s involvement in it all.
“You know I do,” she said softly.
Karim shook his head and looked to the horizon. The sun sat upon it now, a great golden ball perched on the edge of the world. The heat of its early-morning rays filled him, as it did for all Red Lands tribesmen, with the need to move forward.
“What now, hey?” he asked. “You’ll make your way to Bubas and try to raise an army?”
“No,” Sitamun said. “I’m going with you. To Perset.”
Karim’s eyes bulged. “You are?”
“Yes.” The princess sailed past him and plucked her black travel robes from the ground where they’d fallen.
Squinching her nose in distaste, she vigorously shook the sand from the fabric before swinging it around her shoulders.
“Now that I’ve seen what this Setnakht can do, it’s obvious that even a great army may not succeed in defeating him.
Not without more information about the heka used in his resurrection.
He has a plan, that’s clear, and if we’re to have any hope of stopping him, we must have one too.
And as you said yesterday, this lost city of Perset may be the only place to find answers.
” She sniffed. “So, let’s go. We have a lot of ground to cover. ”
Karim, shocked and delighted at this unexpected turn of events, hardly knew what to say. “Well…good!”
Behkai looked back and forth between them with intense anticipation, mouth open, tongue lolling.
“Yes, she’s coming after all,” Karim told him. “I hope you’re happy.”
To his credit, Behkai seemed very happy.
Sitamun waved a hand toward the campsite. “Gather our things, will you?”
Karim scoffed. “Who died and made you god?”
The princess rolled her eyes and began climbing out of the valley, Behkai trotting at her heels.
“Hey!” Karim shouted, scrambling to locate something to cover his nakedness. “Where do you think you’re going? Wait for me!”