Chapter 21 #2
With terrified desperation, she wondered if he felt the same. What if he didn’t? What if all his affection had been him playing the part to fool the Hudjefa? He hated Khetarans, after all, and he cared nothing for her status or her royal blood.
Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t love me, she thought, a lump rising in her throat. It would be easier to leave him.
“Sitamun, you will see me again,” Karim said, mistaking the source of her consternation.
Sita shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
Tentatively, he lifted a hand to her face, cupping her cheek with his calloused palm. She leaned against it, despite herself.
“Do you remember what you said, when you called me back from the dead?” he asked.
Sita recalled kneeling beside Karim’s mutilated body with the scarab amulet in her hand. You can’t die, tomb robber, she’d said. I can’t bear another death on my conscience. The memory gave her a jolt. The amulet hadn’t given him immortality, she realized. It was me.
The amulet’s magic had brought him back. Her command made it permanent.
The word is the deed.
“You said you needed me,” Karim went on, fire in his voice. “You ordered me to come back to you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sita whispered, her tears threatening to overflow. “I didn’t realize… I didn’t mean to…” She couldn’t continue. She’d only meant to save him, not to burden him with a life without end.
“You Khetarans,” Karim broke into her thoughts, his voice husky but suffused with good humor.
“Always so imperious. Telling people when they can and can’t die.
What will you think of next, hey?” He paused, his face growing serious.
“Sena, you have told me much about your magic, this ‘heka.’ You say that with object, word, and action, you can make your wishes real.”
“Yes.”
“Then hear me now. Let me cast my own spell this night.” He took her hand and pressed it to his chest. “Do you feel my heart beating?”
Sita nodded.
“That is the object. These are my words.” He licked his lips.
“No matter where you go, Sitamun, no matter what darkness befalls us in the days to come, I will always come back to you. I owe no fealty to your king or your kingdom, but your command called me back to this earth and to your side. I intend to obey it.”
“I don’t want you to be bound to me because of this magic,” Sita broke in. “It was never my intention to enchant you.”
Karim leaned closer, smiling. “Wasn’t it?” He laid his hand over hers, pressing it to him. “You gave me this heart, Princess. It is yours, magic or no.”
Sita felt her breath grow shallow. Her belly tingled with the closeness of him, the smell of his body, and the heat of his skin beneath her palm.
“Your action,” she murmured.
“What?” His lips were so close to hers that she could taste his breath with every word he spoke.
“The spell you’re casting…” she said, feathery soft. “You have your object and your words. Spells have three parts. What is your action?”
Karim eyes were filled with the sight of her and her alone. “Only this,” he said, and pulled her lips to his.
They’d kissed before, but that kiss was different. There was a hunger behind it, a desperation. This kiss was one to last for days, weeks, centuries.
There was suddenly too much between them—too much space and too much fabric. They struggled to free themselves from their clothes, tossing them aside and nearly into the fire in their haste to entangle their bodies under the midnight sky.
She pulled him on top of her, eager to feel his weight pressing her into the sand, holding her fast to the earth that seemed to be spinning more and more out of control.
He was lean and lithe, the dark hair of his body pleasantly rough against her smoothness, his every movement creating friction that set her senses aflame.
He tore his lips from hers and traveled down her throat, then her collarbone, forging a path of kisses along her body.
She gasped as he traversed her curves with his hands like some wondrous, unexplored country.
She wove her fingers into his hair, clutching its waves and guiding him down to her belly, her hips.
She lifted her head to watch him, the muscles of his back and shoulders flexing as he moved, serpentine; as he drank her in, open-mouthed, like wine.
Every thought was driven from her mind as sensation flooded her body. When she could stand it no longer, she reached for him, coaxing him back into her arms, pulling him to her.
Karim hesitated, his face flushed with desire. “Are you sure?” he asked.
Above them, the sky was dazzling with stars.
It was said that Nut, the sky goddess whose starry body arched over creation, had once been so entwined with her lover, the earth god Geb, that the sun had no space to rise between them.
The sky and the earth could not bear to separated, but they were forced to part in order for another day to come.
Never had Sita felt that story so deeply, nor the fierce need to savor a moment that was destined to burn away in the light of dawn.
“I’m sure,” she whispered into his mouth as she kissed him. “I’m sure.”
Sita felt the earth and sky collide. Not even a single mote of light could possibly shine between them, because there was no between.
There was only fire and breath and passion, and a yearning to stop the night from ending, stop the sun from rising, to remain together and together and together until all the imperishable stars went out.
They held each other, wrapped in a blanket and nothing else, until the dawn came.
Then she wept.
***
Sita refused to take more than the barest minimum of provisions for her journey back to Thonis, despite how fervently Miri and the others tried to send her with more. She accepted only two gifts: their fastest horse, one of five the men had rescued from the city, and a traveling companion.
“You cannot undertake such an expedition alone,” Elyas had insisted. “It’s madness, even for you!”
Aya appeared by her grandfather’s side. “I’ll go!”
“Hush, child,” Elyas scolded.
“This is my fight, Elyas,” Sita said. “The Hudjefa have suffered enough.” She was about to say more when someone gripped her shoulder, and she turned to find Dumiya standing beside her.
Unlike the other warriors, the older woman looked no worse for wear and sported nary a bruise nor a scrape from her battles with the ushabti.
Dumiya put a hand to her chest, then pressed her two fists together and pointed to Sita. Her message was clear.
I am with you.
Sita relented. “Thank you,” she said. It was obvious the woman had already made up her mind and would not be dissuaded.
Elyas watched the exchange with satisfaction. “Dumiya will be an excellent escort—a good rider and even better in a fight. You are wrong to say this is your fight alone, Sita. The fight against those accursed creatures belongs to us all.”
It didn’t take long for them to finish packing the supplies and readying Sita and Dumiya’s horses. In fact, it all happened far too quickly.
Karim said, “You should go while it’s still early. Try to get some ground under you before the hottest part of the day.” He adjusted the black hood around her face. She could see that every word pained him. The worst was yet to come. They both knew it.
Many of the Hudjefa came to say their goodbyes. They, too, were preparing to set off toward the Iteru, where Karim hoped to barter with a trading ship for passage to the western riverbank. From there, they wouldn’t be far from the Anen’s herding route.
“My tracking skills have yet to fail me, sen,” he assured Elyas. “We’ll find them. My nose will lead me home.”
“Once a dog, always a dog,” Sita teased.
She looked down at Behkai, who seemed to sense that the time of their parting was close at hand. His long black tail was tucked between his legs, and his pointed ears drooped.
“It’s all right, boy,” Sita said, placing a kiss on his head as she always did. “You take care of that thief while I’m away, all right?”
Behkai whined.
“Do both dogs get a kiss?” Karim asked.
Sita chuckled. It was better than crying.
She kissed him, lingering long enough that the young women standing nearby tittered.
They still believed Sita and Karim were married—she hadn’t had the time nor the energy to admit the truth.
Her eyes were wet when she pulled away, and she quickly dashed the tears from her face, eager to move past the pain.
Turning from Karim, she tangled her fingers in the black stallion’s thick mane and hoisted herself onto his back.
Dumiya was already astride a large silver mare.
Sita checked that the packs were secure, and Karim handed her the serpent staff, which he’d fitted with a strip of leather so that she could more easily sling it across her back.
When her fingers slipped from his, she knew it was the last time they’d touch.
She bit her lip, willing herself to be strong.
The oracle meant for the four of us to be together, she thought. Maybe the little priestess and the warrior are together already. The lamb’s prophecy can’t come true until we’re all in the same place, so I will see him again. I must.
Still, she didn’t know that for a fact, nor if the oracle would actually come to pass. After all, what if they’d made choices to alter the foretold course of events in some way?
No. There was no point in that line of thinking. It would only lead to chaos. She, like the Hudjefa, needed to have faith. She needed to believe she was on the gods’ path.
“Here,” she said, removing the green scarab amulet from her neck and tossing it to Karim. “I want you to have it.”
Karim examined the necklace. “I can’t take this. Didn’t you say your father gave it to you?”
Sita glanced at his chest, where she could just make out the edge of his scarab-shaped scar. “You can return it when you come back to me.”
Karim’s jaw tightened, and he looped the amulet around his neck. “Very well, sena. Until I see you again.”
With that, she spurred the horse with her heels and held on tight as the stallion broke into a gallop. Dumiya followed at her side with the wind at her back.
Together they rode into the Red Desert, their horses kicking plumes of sand into the air as they went.
Sita looked back at the tribe as they crested a dune and left them to their own long and treacherous journey. Then she turned her gaze toward Thonis.
You can stop searching for me now, Mery, Sita thought. I’m coming home.