Chapter 15 #2
The flow of words made Sita feel lightheaded, but she kept walking, so as not to lose the women in the dim, winding tunnel.
“Perhaps you and your brother are the same,” one sister said, Sita couldn’t tell which. “Perhaps you are capable of unimaginable things too.”
Sita shivered, uncertain how to reply to such strange tidings.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked after they had walked a while in silence. “Is this another way out of the temple? Karim will wonder about me…” Before either woman could answer, the tunnel walls caught Sita’s attention. “Wait! There are paintings here. This is Queen Anet, Setnakht’s wife!”
Sita stopped to point at a picture of a familiar bald-headed woman.
In the image, the queen held a staff entwined with two serpents and stood in front of a falcon-headed god on a great golden boat.
“This is Ra on his solar barque, on his nightly journey through the underworld,” she said, fascinated.
“Queen Anet goes before him, walking on water, almost as if she is protecting him.”
She squinted at the image of a red fish below the queen’s feet.
“My tutor told me about this. The name Anet…” She paused, then snapped her fingers.
“Yes! Anet is a sacred fish who, along with her brother Abtu, alerts Ra and protects him during his journey.” She regarded the ancient queen with new eyes.
“She must have been a powerful priestess to have been given that name.”
The two women listened, their expressions patient and knowing.
“This is the way to her tomb, isn’t it? Her actual tomb. Perhaps Setnakht wanted to ensure that it wouldn’t be found by tomb robbers, so he installed traps and a hidden door in the room above leading down to this tunnel.”
The somber sister patted Sita on the shoulder. “You took…the hard way.”
Sita sighed. “Don’t I always?”
The woman shrugged. “I would rather wield a tempered blade than one that has never endured the flames.”
Sita’s cheeks reddened.
“Instead of focusing on your shortcomings,” the bright sister commented, “remember your strengths. The word is the deed. What you say, what you think, becomes your reality.”
Sita stopped. “What did you say?”
The Hudjefa wouldn’t know such words.
They’d reached the end of the tunnel. The two women stood beside each other in the archway ahead, one bathed in the torch’s firelight, the other cloaked in shadow.
“The word is the deed,” the women repeated in unison, the sound reverberating through the space.
The somber sister smiled and turned her back. “You can find your own way from here, Sitamun.”
“What?” Sita said. “You can’t leave me. What if I get lost?”
The other woman turned away too, a mirror of her sister. “You won’t. You’re exactly where you need to be.”
With that, she hurled the torch into the chamber.
Sita cried out, shutting her eyes against the sudden brightness.
When she opened them again, the women and the torch were gone. The chamber beyond was aglow with firelight. The room was large, and half a dozen burning braziers lined its stone walls.
“Hello?” Sita called, her pulse racing.
Where had the sisters gone? Was she dreaming?
She touched the tunnel wall, felt its solidity beneath her fingers.
No. This is real.
There, in the middle of the illuminated chamber, she saw a magnificent sarcophagus carved of red granite, with the recumbent form of a woman on its lid.
Sita’s breath caught in her throat. Queen Anet’s tomb. This is it!
She took a few tentative steps inside. The floor was littered with stone shards, many of them vibrant with color. The wall on the left had been reduced to rubble, as if someone had taken a hammer to it. Sita bent to pick up a large piece, squinting at the painted fragment.
It was a rendering of a lamb, its head raised heavenward, its mouth open, a bloody wound staining its wool red.
The lamb, a voice in her mind whispered.
Sita dropped the fragment. It clattered on the ground.
Shaken, she turned to the back wall. The paintings there were undamaged and featured engravings that were finer than others she’d seen in the temple.
The central image was another scene of Queen Anet and her king—but this was no family portrait.
In it, the queen, dressed as a priestess, knelt before Setnakht and offered him two symbols enclosed in a shen ring, indicating the gift was both protected and eternal.
The first symbol was a rolled scroll, tied at the middle, and the second was the symbol of a seated god with the head of an ibis.
“The Book of Thoth,” Sita murmured. She’d never heard of it.
Queen Anet gave the book to Setnakht. I wonder what was in it…
Sita turned back to the sarcophagus. The carved-stone woman lay with her arms crossed over her chest, a beatific expression on her face. Images of Nepthys were engraved along the lower half of her body, while lotus blossoms and a large winged scarab decorated her arms and chest.
Sita wondered again about Queen Anet’s grave goods. The chamber contained no baskets, chests, or artifacts of any kind—save one. A long twisted piece of driftwood lay along the sarcophagus as if the stone woman was holding it.
That must be the queen’s staff pictured in the paintings, Sita realized. Except if this was Queen Anet’s staff, it was missing an important element. Two, in fact.
I wonder what happened to them?
The silence was broken by a fearsome hiss. The sound was very loud and very close.
Sita froze. She scanned the room, seeking its source.
Then she saw them—two cobras, slithering toward her from either side of the sarcophagus. One was a deep wine color with a black band across its throat, and the other was entirely black. They moved toward her in silent, sinuous harmony, each one as thick as her arm and four times as long.
Sita watched them, transfixed. She knew she should back away, but she couldn’t move. The snakes raised up their heads until a full third of their bodies had lifted off the ground, and their hoods spread wide.
She broke into a cold sweat as the red cobra slithered before her, so close she could see the firelight reflected in its eyes. It tasted the air with its forked tongue.
Flick.
Flick.
Sita stared, afraid to look away.
She blinked, and the cobra lunged, though it was so fast she swore she’d imagined it.
She felt a tingle at her wrist. Without moving her head, she glanced down at her bare arm. Two puncture wounds, small and clean, dotted her skin.
Nebet’s constant warning filled Sita’s mind. The serpent’s kiss is as quick as lightning—and just as deadly.
Almost instantly, the tingle became a searing agony. She fell to her knees and onto the dusty ground as the pain traveled up her arm and spread through her body like fire consuming dry brush.
Gasping, moaning, Sita turned her gaze back to the two cobras. The red cobra remained close, rearing, hissing, while the black cobra lurked behind it, still and watchful. They didn’t seem interested in attacking her again. Perhaps they knew one bite was enough.
As poison flooded her veins, Sita was overcome with another sensation.
Despair.
She was going to die, having failed her kingdom and everyone she’d ever loved.
She thought of the oracle and all its divine portents. How could the gods have been so wrong about her? How could they not have seen the path of her life lead to a meaningless death?
How foolish she’d been, allowing herself to be delayed in Perset for so long, when she should have been raising an army to remove Mery from the throne! How selfish to fall into a happy rhythm—not to mention the arms of a man—and forget the suffering that lay outside the lost city!
You thought you’d changed after leaving Thonis, but you haven’t. You’re still weak, still a coward.
She had tried so hard to deny her demons. But still they came for her. Despite her struggles to live in the light, Sita was destined to die in darkness, alone but for the hatred she felt for herself.
The pain was cresting, and Sita knew that death would soon follow. She cursed the two strange women for abandoning her. Perhaps if they had stayed, she could have avoided this fate. She recalled their strange talk, their mysterious pronouncements.
Perhaps you and your brother are the same.
Sita almost smiled at that.
Mery would never take a snakebite lying down. He’d grab the snake by its throat and bite it back.
Tears pricked Sita’s eyes, and she gasped as that one simple thought unearthed a secret she’d kept hidden, the most terrible secret of all.
A sob escaped her throat.
Despite everything that had happened, everything Mery had done—
“I still love him.”
Without meaning to, she’d whispered the words aloud. And like a spell, her words invoked the voices of the two sisters. They echoed through the chamber, speaking in tandem with each other and with the slowing pulse of her heart.
Will you cling to the light?
Or embrace the darkness?
Will you accept the shadow within?
Or remain forever fractured?
She thought again of Mery.
My twin.
Being compared to him used to make her proud. Used to make her feel like she too was like the sun—brilliant, radiant with power.
Now the thought filled her with horror.
My mirror.
Her brother knew they were the same. One soul reflected upon itself. That’s why he wanted her at his side, to act as the other edge of his sword. One edge to cleave, to shape the world in his image—and the other to bathe in the blood of his glory.
After the Bast Festival, she’d learned to hate herself because every time she saw her reflection, it reminded her of him.
Sita felt the venom spread into her lungs, her throat.
He and I may be alike, but I would never do what he did!
It was in that moment of defiance that Sita recognized where she and Mery diverged.
Mery had chosen to poison their father, to let Maet die, to massacre the innocent—and Sita had chosen to defy him.