5 Neff
Neff
The embalmer sat at the long table at the back of his workshop in the Temple of Amun, carefully inscribing sacred words onto a roll of linen wrappings.
As usual, he wore a simple white tunic, and his hair was a wild nest. His hair was the only feature that separated him from the other priests, who shaved themselves bald in their daily cleansing rituals.
The embalmer, to whom the rules didn’t always apply, had never had the patience for such things.
His hand paused halfway to the inkpot.
“Come in, Nefermaat,” he said without turning. “I can tell from your heavy breathing that you’ve run the entire way here.”
Neff entered the room and sagged against the wall. “How did you know it was me?” Kenna seemed to have an almost supernatural talent for observation.
“It was either you or a very overworked dog,” he said and faced her.
Neff scowled. “Very funny.”
A silence fell between them. Neff toed the ground with her sandal, feeling awkward.
The last time they’d seen each other was at the coronation, and they hadn’t spoken.
Kenna had been rightfully hurt by Neff’s choice to leave the temple in favor of living at the palace with Meryamun, but she’d tried to give him a sign that there was more to her decision by handing him a small pomegranate.
They’d shared one together in the temple gardens the day the prince had offered to be her honorary brother.
She thought he’d understood what she was trying to tell him—that she was still loyal to him, still his little sister—but she didn’t know for sure if he’d gotten the message.
Is he still angry at me?
As if reading her mind, the young prince said, “I assume you’ve come to explain why you’d leave your duties at the temple to spend your days ministering to my brother.” He spoke the last word with distaste, with the undercurrent of what Kenna really wanted to call Meryamun: a murderer.
“Yes and no. I don’t have that much time right now, but I promise to tell you everything as soon as I can. I came to ask for your help. I need you to teach me how to practice heka.”
Kenna’s eyebrow lifted. “I heard the priests have been sending you materials. Mery must really trust you if he’s given you access to such forbidden knowledge. You’ve been ordered to use its power for the crown, is that it?”
“That’s what your brother thinks, but it’s not what I truly aim to do. I want to learn so I can use heka against him. That’s why I left the temple. I didn’t want to, but you’re right, Meryamun trusts me. Sitting by his side, I have a chance at stopping him.”
The cynicism dropped from Kenna’s birdlike, angular face and was replaced with dismay. “You did this to undermine him? To sabotage the king? I took your pomegranate as a sign of peace…not a clue to some kind of fledgling conspiracy!”
“I am only following the path the gods laid out for me in my visions. It is what I am meant to do.”
The piety in her voice unsettled the young prince. She could see the war going on behind his eyes—he was a man of faith, but he’d also been at the receiving end of his brother’s wrath.
“He’ll kill you if he finds out the truth.”
“I know.”
Kenna rubbed his face, smearing ink onto one cheek, then leaned against the table, looking pained. “You shame me, little sister. You’ve more courage in one finger than I have in total.”
Neff dropped her head. “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“So…does that mean you’ll help me?” she asked hopefully.
Kenna took up a cloth and began meticulously cleaning the ink from each finger, oblivious to the streak of black across his face. Neff watched him, suppressing a smile. When he finally answered, she saw a glint of excitement in his eyes.
“When do we start?”
The next day, Neff and Kenna sat on the floor of the Horus Room, cross-legged like children, with a dozen papyri scattered around them.
The subterranean chamber had been emptied and abandoned since Amunmose’s court was poisoned there, so Neff thought it the ideal place to conduct their lessons.
It was an eerie room, the air heavy with phantoms, but Neff needed to be certain that they wouldn’t be caught.
Besides, if any spirits still lingered there, Neff imagined they’d be pleased to see someone working to defeat the man who’d ordered their deaths.
They’d been practicing for more than an hour when Kenna said, “It’s all well and good to learn the correct inflections and movements—but what do you know about heka itself? About its origins?”
Neff set down the papyrus she’d been studying. “Is that important?”
“Of course it’s important!” Kenna exclaimed. “One cannot build a sturdy house without a strong foundation.” He clasped his long, thin hands and straightened. “Where do you think magic comes from, Nefermaat?”
“The gods?”
“Not exactly. Heka is older than the gods—in fact, it was magic that brought them into being. Like us, the gods are subject to heka, which permeates every creature, every rock, everything in our world. When a priest invokes the gods in his spell, he is simply calling out the heka within them to work upon the heka within the magic’s recipient.
Heka is not outside nature; it is nature. ”
Thoughtful, Neff leaned her chin on her fist. “I’ve read spells that call to heka in the invocation. ‘Hear me, O Heka…’ But isn’t ‘heka’ just another word for ‘magic’?”
“Heka is magic, but he is a god too. Have you ever seen a picture of his divine form?”
Neff shook her head.
“Let me see what I can find…” Kenna rifled through the pile of scrolls he’d borrowed from the House of Life to further her education. “Ah! Here we are.” The prince pulled a papyrus free and unrolled it.
Along with some text, the scroll featured an illustration of a figure wearing a complex triple-feathered crown and the sidelock of youth. He was naked and had one finger raised to his lips in a gesture of innocence. Neff gasped. “He’s a child!”
Kenna’s eyes crinkled with the hint of a smile.
“He is. It’s his title, in fact. Heka the Child.
Where else could magic live but within a pure, wondering heart?
Another reason why Montuhotep was a fool to treat you the way he did.
A high priest should know not to underestimate the divine power of the young. ”
The idea of a child god filled Neff with a glittering excitement. “Tell me more,” she pleaded. “Tell me everything.”
Kenna explained the inherent duality of magic, its darkness and its light. He taught her about “encircling,” and how it can be used to either protect or control, and about saliva as both a creative tool and a curse. He also gave her some practical instruction about protection spells.
“If a threat is on the horizon, armor yourself against it by preparing a spell and wearing it on your person,” Kenna told her. “The trick is that the spell must be very specific to the exact nature of the threat in order to safeguard you from it.”
Neff nodded and scribbled notes on some papyrus scraps she’d brought. They were about to move on to another topic when the Medjed scroll caught Kenna’s eye.
“What’s this? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
“The Heka priests may have put it in my delivery by accident. It’s really old—part of a longer work, I think. It has to do with an obscure god named Medjed. It doesn’t work, though.”
Kenna looked up sharply. “And how do you know that?”
Neff froze, realizing her mistake. “Um…” She shrunk back and squeaked, “Because I tried it?”
“You did what?”
“Nothing happened. I promise!”
Kenna rubbed the hooked bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Nefermaat, I know you are eager to learn, and that your intentions are noble—but you cannot experiment with magic that you don’t understand!”
“I’m sorry!” Neff wrung her hands, feeling sick at the thought of disappointing the prince. “I just…I feel so alone at the palace, and so scared. I thought this Medjed could be my guardian. But like I said, nothing happened. Nothing good and nothing bad either.”
Kenna sighed, and his next words were soft as goose down. “I don’t blame you, little sister. If anything, I blame myself for not being there for you.”
“You’re here now.”
Their eyes met, and Neff could have sworn she saw Kenna’s glisten.
He sniffed, immediately back to business.
“Besides, I probably would have done the same thing. It is curious, this scroll…” He dipped his head to study the faded text.
“The name Medjed is familiar, but I simply can’t remember where I’ve read it before.
” He shook his head in irritation. “It will come to me in time. It always does.”
Neff returned the ancient scroll to its container and was moving on to the next one when the air in the room shifted. There was someone behind her! She gasped and whirled around, expecting the worst—
Except no one was there.
Kenna had jumped to his feet beside her, alarmed. “What? What is it?”
Neff scanned every shadow in the Horus Room and found nothing. “I could have sworn I felt something moving behind me. I guess I’m nervous about being caught. If Meryamun finds out what we’re doing…”
“You’re right. We’ve been away long enough already. We should get back before we’re missed. When shall we meet again?”
“I’ll try to send a message. Your brother has agreed to bring in some new servants from the city, so I’m hoping to befriend one of them. If I gain their loyalty, they can pass communications between us.”
“You’d trust someone you just met with such a task?”
“We can’t do this alone, my prince. I must have faith that the right person will cross my path.”
“Very well, little sister. I’ll await your message.”
The two left the chamber and parted ways—Kenna taking a secret corridor, and Neff sneaking back through the hall that led up a set of stairs to the palace proper.
Neff made her way toward the stairs, unable to shake the feeling of being followed. I must steady my nerves before I rejoin the king for his afternoon meetings. She took a deep, cleansing breath.