Chapter 37
Sita
Three soldiers advanced toward the platform with spears. Sitamun whirled on them, her voluminous green gown following like an ocean wave. By the time she registered the attackers, they’d already let their spears fly.
The thick fog that had clouded her mind while she’d been enchanted had given way to a crystalline clarity.
Without hesitation or forethought, she unfurled her left arm, and the two tiny serpents that had been curled around her ear came to life.
They slithered down her neck and along her arm, growing all the while, and then curled themselves in her hand, one red and one black, stretching, straightening, twisting into each other along a band of white light.
In the blink of an eye, the light developed shape and texture.
A length of twisted wood now in her hand, the serpents twined around it went still.
Sita slammed the base of the serpent staff on the platform.
Next to her, Neff shrieked as the three spears sliced through the air toward them. Rae stepped in front of the girl, while Karim raised his arms to try and shield them both.
Twin beams of white light surged from the serpent staff and encircled all four of them with sudden radiance. The spears struck the light and bounced back, clattering to the ground.
The three soldiers stared at Sita, aghast.
They ran.
Sita exhaled, and the ring of light faded. She turned to the others. “Are you all right?”
She saw Neff peer out from under Rae’s arm, and at the sight of the girl, the memory of what she had done while under Mery’s curse came flooding back to her.
Shame rose in Sita’s throat. “I’m so sorry, Nefermaat. I hurt you, didn’t I? Can you forgive me?”
Neff’s expression was soft. “It wasn’t you who did those things. It was him.”
Even as the battle thundered around them, Sita felt more at peace than she had in a long, long time. The little priestess had given her the absolution she hadn’t known she’d needed.
Sita nodded in thanks as the air crackled between them. She felt the power of the oracle, and from the determined expressions on the others’ faces, she could tell they felt it too.
“Princess, we must go to the citadel,” Neff said. “Meryamun took Kenna inside. He’s going to kill him!”
Sita blanched. A season earlier, she never would have believed her brother capable of such an atrocity. Now, she didn’t question it. She leaped off the platform and made for the citadel.
“Wait!” Karim exclaimed, coming after her. “You’re not going in there alone. We go together!”
“Fine, but we must go now!”
The woman called Raetawy jumped to the ground and grabbed Sita by the shoulder.
“Hey! What about my men? Those priests cast some kind of spell on them, and they’re out there killing each other! They’re the ones who put a stop to this barbaric ritual in the first place. Are you going to leave them to die? The prince’s life isn’t the only one at stake here!”
Sita glanced at the hand on her shoulder and the rebel’s face with exasperation. “I can’t lose my brother! Don’t you understand?”
Nefermaat stepped between them. “I think the priests are maintaining the spell through concentration, which is why they’re wearing the blindfolds.” The two Heka priests stood in the shadow of the citadel, chanting and releasing the tendrils of black smoke. “If we can break it—”
Before Nefermaat could finish her thought, Raetawy launched herself toward the two priests. The rebel whipped the scepter she carried in a low arc, striking a devastating blow to one of the priest’s knees.
The man howled in agony and collapsed to the ground, curling around his shattered joint and screaming. The other priest stopped chanting and started to remove his blindfold. Tossing the scepter into her other hand, Raetawy landed a heavy punch to his temple that knocked him out cold.
“Like that?” Raetawy called back at them.
In the courtyard, the black smoke dissipated, rendering a dozen men stunned. They looked at each other in confusion, then turned their weapons from ally to enemy once more.
Nefermaat blinked. “Um, yes. Exactly like that.”
Sita ran up the citadel steps and wrenched the brass ring affixed to the large wooden door. It wouldn’t budge.
“Allow me,” Karim offered, and took a turn, but to no avail. Even with Raetawy adding her own strength to the task, the door remained firmly shut.
“It must be braced from the inside,” Sita said, frantic.
Beside her, Nefermaat bent to pick up a wooden arrow that hadn’t found its target.
“Let me try something,” she said, and stood at the door holding the arrow in both hands. Her brow furrowed, and her lips moved silently before she cleared her throat and spoke.
“Hear me, Bes—protector of women and children, guardian of the threshold! I am both woman and child, and I ask you to break the barrier that prevents me from entering this place! Help me repel evil from this door, as you would every door upon this earth!”
With that, the young priestess snapped the arrow in half.
Sita heard a distinct splintering noise on the other side of the door, then the clunk! clunk! of two objects hitting the ground. Incredulous, she gave the door another tug.
It creaked open, revealing a broken wooden brace beyond the threshold.
They all stared at Nefermaat, who blushed with pleasure.
“How could you know such a specific spell?” Sita asked her.
“I didn’t. I made it up. I can’t believe it worked!”
Sita scrutinized the young priestess. She hadn’t studied a lot of heka, but she knew that spells were sacred, written only by the sagest of priests, who often spent lifetimes in trial and error, combining objects, words, and actions to create a successful result.
Yet this girl had done it on a whim.
Truly, the gods must be at her ear, Sita thought.
They rushed inside the citadel, Raetawy and Karim at the front, Sita and Neff following behind them. Inside, they faced an empty antechamber, with long corridors stretching to the left and right.
“Which way?” Karim asked.
Raetawy pressed her ear to the wall and held up a hand for silence. After listening intently for a few seconds, she said, “Left,” and turned down the corridor.
They’d only gone a few steps before they heard a strident shout and half a dozen armed guards poured out of a doorway ahead, charging toward them.
“You take three and I take three,” Raetawy said to Karim.
Karim grinned, then ducked as a khopesh blade sailed over his head. “Your generosity, sena, it is boundless.” The guard took the full force of Karim’s attack as he rammed into the man’s hips and slammed him—and the guard behind him—into the stone wall.
Meanwhile, Raetawy blocked a guard’s first strike, dealt him a punch to the gut, and spun out to kick another man into the opposite wall, bashing the sword from his hand with her scepter as he bounced back.
It all happened in a whirl of flashing blades and bellows while Sita looked on, holding Nefermaat behind her and her serpent staff as a shield.
After thirty seconds of frenzied fighting, Karim and Raetawy stood over the unconscious guards, panting.
“You said three each, sena, and yet you took four,” Karim complained.
“You hit that last one first.”
“Yes, but you took him down, so I hardly think that counts.”
“Can we please argue about this later?” Sita said, rushing past them both to the doorway ahead.
When she reached the portal, Sita found a smaller chamber within, boasting high ceilings, tall windows, and a line of cold braziers terminating at an austere wooden throne.
Near the throne, the ram-masked priest chanted, his arms raised to the heavens.
Kenna knelt before him in a pool of sunlight, dust motes floating around him.
Kenna looked up when Sita entered the room, and when their eyes met, she saw a slight brightening in his pale, somber face.
Then Mery stepped out from the shadow of the throne behind him. “Goodbye, brother,” he said, and hefted the stone mace into the air. His face alive with malice, Mery brought it crashing down upon Kenna’s head.