Chapter 17
Karim
Karim felt fate on the wind.
He felt it as soon as they emerged from the underground temple into the yellow blaze of day.
A hot breeze dipped into the valley, ruffling his brown curls and filling his senses with that familiar, intoxicating scent.
Even before Aya had shared her warning, he heard the words in the air, whispered with divine certainty.
Something is coming.
He hoped it was merely a figment of his imagination, the result of overexerting himself in the midday sun as he ran to the village for help.
When he saw the scarabs, he knew it was true.
“Where are they coming from?” Sita exclaimed in alarm as the beetles surged from beneath the desert floor to swarm all around them.
Aya started screaming, and Karim lifted the girl into his arms. She clung to him, shaking. “Don’t let them get me!” she begged.
“Shh, young sena. I’ve got you.” He watched the flow of black iridescent shells. They were not attacking them, merely moving past them—and in one direction. “They’re all going toward the old palace!” he told Sitamun.
The breeze lifted the princess’s mane of black hair off her shoulders and tossed it as she turned to Setnakht’s palace, where the massive statue of Set beckoned. When she met Karim’s gaze again, he knew they were sharing the same thought.
Handing Aya to Zev, Karim said, “Run to the village and raise the alarm, sen. Arm yourselves, quickly now. I fear these creatures are harbingers of what’s to come.”
“Why should I follow your orders?” Zev snarled. He was about to continue his rebuke when Aya pressed her cheek into the side of his neck.
“Please listen to him. Please!”
Zev relented. “This is your fault, I know it,” he said to Karim. “You’ve brought this upon us.” Then he hoisted the girl higher in his arms and ran.
Karim told Sita, “You should go with him too, Princess, where it’s safe. Khetara needs you.”
Sitamun lifted her chin and held the twisted serpent staff at her side.
At her feet, the scarab beetles parted before her.
Karim couldn’t help but stare. Standing there, with her shoulders thrown back and the wind in her hair, the princess was magnificent to behold, the kind of woman who inspired men to take up paintbrushes and chisels, who soldiers traveled to the ends of the earth to fight for—to die for.
“I know my kingdom needs me,” she said. “That’s why I’m coming with you.”
Karim nodded. “As you wish, sena.”
He didn’t believe in the Khetaran gods, but in that moment, he believed in her.
Together, they took off at a sprint, following the river of scarabs to the ancient palace.
***
They reached the large tree-lined courtyard in front of the palace in short order, though Sitamun was winded once they got there.
Her staff must have been heavy, and Karim was impressed at how fleet of foot she was on her twisted ankle.
As for himself, he was continually mystified at his inexhaustible stamina.
He should have been tired after the run back and forth to the village, yet he felt as strong as ever.
Perhaps his time among the Hudjefa had been more rejuvenating than he’d accounted for.
The scarabs had gathered and were crawling everywhere—up the trunks of the palm trees, the legs of the big statue, and the walls of the ruined palace, until every surface squirmed with restless excitement.
“Why are they all here?” Karim wondered aloud. “What are they waiting for?”
A thunder of hoofbeats answered him.
Karim’s heart—still heavy, still strange—thrummed as he turned toward the sound.
In the distance, a dark rider appeared at the head of the road into Perset.
He rode swiftly, growing from a black spot at the edge of Karim’s vision to a defined silhouette within seconds.
Karim watched the approach, enthralled, his mind desperately attempting to make sense of what he was seeing.
He couldn’t decide which was more forbidding, the man or his steed.
The man wore a crimson cape that sailed behind him, rippling like the current of a bloodred river. He was clad in gleaming bronze and black leather, and wore a helm boasting tall, blunted ears and the snout of an animal not known to nature but known to Karim.
The man’s horse—if one could call it that—was so hideous, so foul, so utterly gruesome, that even to look upon it made Karim’s stomach churn.
It wore a glorious red-feathered headdress, a golden bridle, and a black leather saddle, but those pretty things did nothing to hide the horrors beneath: the eyeless, fleshless skull with its huge teeth gnashing at the bit; the black body, missing large patches of skin along its flank that revealed dark muscle, sinew, and bone beneath, moving in a ceaseless rhythm.
And the worst feature of all: the heaving masses of insects flowing from those exposed, rotting places; the maggots and locusts and spiders and, yes, the scarabs.
Insects writhed and dropped from the horse’s desiccated flesh, only to follow in the beast’s footsteps, both on the ground and in the air, a thousand flying, buzzing acolytes ushering their putrid god.
As the rider drew closer, Karim shook himself free of its spell and grabbed Sitamun by the hand. “We must take cover,” he said.
The princess didn’t take her eyes off the rider as they ducked behind a broken column to watch the man’s final approach.
“Is that…?” she asked, leaving the question unfinished.
Karim’s heart beat strongly, like a dog pulling at its lead, trying to return to its master. He felt panic rising inside him, threatening to flood all reason.
“No,” he murmured. “No, no, no…”
The rider pulled back on the reins as he reached the courtyard, and the horse loosed a spine-chilling cry as it reared back and came to a halt in a cloud of red dust. Beetles wriggled around it, unfazed by the threat of the horse’s stamping hooves.
The rider reached up to lift his helm, exposing his face to the sun.
“Amun help us,” Sita whispered.
A lordly, intelligent face took in the landscape, gazing upon the crumbling ancient palace with the pride of homecoming. However, this was no ordinary man. His face was exceedingly long and narrow, giving him an unearthly quality, which was only accentuated by the greenish tinge of his skin.
The last time Karim had seen that face, it had been a grinning skull. But even in living flesh, he would recognize the creature anywhere. One does not usually get the opportunity to reunite with one’s murderer, but that day, Karim did.
After a thousand years, Setnakht had returned to Perset.
“My city,” Setnakht rumbled. His voice was deep and discordant, as if every utterance went against the law of nature. “How I’ve missed you.”
The monstrous horse whinnied, and Setnakht reached out to stroke it until it calmed.
I think that’s the mummified horse Djet and I saw inside the tomb, Karim thought. He must have gone back there to get it, and his armor too.
“What do we do?” Sita asked. She looked pale and frightened.
“I don’t know…” The ancient pharaoh had been a formidable foe even before he’d taken Karim’s heart. Now that Setnakht was fully resurrected, Karim hadn’t the faintest idea how to stop him.
As if sensing their presence, Setnakht nudged the horse closer to the fallen column. Karim and Sitamun slid down low, pressing their backs to the stone. His pulse racing, Karim listened to the creature’s slow, heavy footfalls approach them.
The sound stopped, near enough that some of the insects surrounding the beast crawled onto the stone column and skittered over Karim’s shoulders and chest. He resisted the urge to brush them away, lest it betray them.
Next to him, Sitamun suffered the same fate as insects swarmed over her body.
When a spider crept across her throat, she covered her mouth with one hand to stop herself from screaming.
Once the swarm had scattered, Karim peered over his shoulder and saw Setnakht facing the enormous statue of Set.
“I have returned to you, Lord,” the pharaoh said. “At long last, I have come to finish what I started.”
With a frisson of dread, Karim remembered the words Sitamun had recited from the old map: He shall not travel West, for his work is unfinished.
“The heathen plague has infested Perset for too long,” Setnakht continued.
“They will be the first to feel the wrath of the Storm God.” He paused, raising both arms to the sky.
He held a black and crimson crook in one hand and a flail in the other.
Then, in a voice that seemed to amplify a hundredfold, he spoke again.
“Heed me, O ushabti! Wake and hear my call! Your long sleep is now over, and as is your duty, you will rise to do great works in this land. Come, my ushabti! The sun rises once more on the reign of Set, the one true god! Rise from your slumber and say, ‘Here I am,’ so that I may count you among my number!”
“Ushabti?” Karim muttered, unfamiliar with the word.
“They’re small figurines we place in royal tombs,” Sitamun explained quietly.
“To serve the dead as servants in the afterlife. We inscribe the name of the king on them so that when the ushabti comes to life, it will know its master. But why is he using an ushabti spell here? This isn’t the underworld. ”
Karim thought of the army of tiny men he’d seen in Setnakht’s tomb. Those must have been ushabti. They’d been arranged in front of a Set statue much like the larger one standing before them. It was as if that chamber of the tomb was a miniature replica of Perset’s palace courtyard.
Karim swallowed hard. “I have a bad feeling about this…”
“Heed me, O ushabti!” Setnakht cried once more. “Wake and hear my call!”
The insects scattered.
Setnakht fell silent.
From where they lay concealed behind the column, Karim had a clear view of one side of the tree-lined courtyard. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose, where it hung suspended for a long, long moment before it fell.