Chapter 22 #2
“When I was young, the world believed in magic, so it was everywhere. Those who learned to harvest it for themselves were worshipped, and through people’s prayers became even more powerful.
” Painted figures sprang to life on the column as Nour spoke, growing wings and animal heads.
“Not all of these gods were good. Some were not satisfied simply with prayers.”
The Ageless Ones made no sound, but Celia’s gaze flicked to them anyway.
“There was a war,” Nour went on. “A war between Sancts who wished to grow humanity and those who wished simply to feed on it. My brother and I fought for farmers and pharaohs and priests… for those who dreamed such glorious things as pyramids. But their prayers only carried us so far.”
On the column, Celia could see shadow-stringers sending whips of darkness up to lash a gold-masqued man out of the sky.
Black tendrils gripped his arms and legs and wings, each pulling in a separate direction.
He came apart like a gingerbread cookie.
Bits and pieces fell to the ground, while the cold stars watched.
“My brother was murdered. And I? I could not sit with my grief.” Nour swallowed.
A smaller version of herself had appeared on the column: The winged woman turned into a jackal and began gathering up the pieces of the slain god.
“I used all my sadness, my loss, and my rage to carve a door into the afterlife. I journeyed into the Duat and found my brother’s soul. ”
She’d used the ivory wand for this, it seemed, slicing a wide arc through the air so that the stars fell away. What replaced them was far vaster than night. A dark that Celia still failed to describe—it matched her previous vision exactly.
“I brought him back to Egypt. I tried to make him whole again. For a time, it seemed the magic had worked… well enough for the rest of the dead in the Duat to understand that they too might be able to return to their old lives. They started to pass through the door I’d made…
” The cloud of darkness swirled along the column, breaking only to show hungry, skeletal figures.
“A few found mummified bodies to return to. Others tried to possess the living. More and more poured out the door, taking over the necropolis, and then turning to nearby towns. Children and the elderly were choked out of their bodies first—” Nour shuddered, turning away from the mural’s depiction of these events.
“It was hell on earth. My brother and I tried to fight them.
Even our mortal enemies joined us against the ranks of the dead, but for as many ghouls we stopped, thrice more appeared.
“It became clear I had to close the door. But what was opened by grief could not be so easily sealed—I tried and tried, but my wand kept failing. The gate to the Duat remained. The dead kept devouring their way through the desert. It was only a matter of time before they reached Thebes.”
The column was almost completely black now, except for a small ring of Sancts standing around the door. It was difficult to tell from such generalized drawings, but Celia could have sworn they were the same men and woman who circled her now.
“We combined all our knowledge and powers—and while the door into Death could not be closed, we realized that it could be contained. Entombed. Have you ever heard of immurement?”
Celia shook her head.
“A darker magic, certainly. It’s where the soul of an innocent is used to shore up a building by being buried alive in its foundations—like your London Bridge.
The spell we used to contain the door employs a similar concept…
Life is needed to keep death at bay. In order to contain the hell I’d unleashed, I had to become the key.
My life force was bound directly into the stones we used to seal the gate.
As long as I lived, the dead would be contained.
I took up the path of the Ageless Ones. I cut out my own heart…
but I could not bring myself to follow their more vampiric ways.
Walking the earth would have meant more bloodshed, so I chose a dreamless sleep instead. ”
Celia recalled the sarcophagus lying like a split pea shell on the floor of the fourth pyramid’s burial chamber. And the curse lurking over its hidden entrance: The key to death lies within. Beware what you unlock, for what is sealed was never meant to open.
Oh gods. It made so much more sense now.
As did Lord Blackwood’s words…
I dug her out of her grave! Ruined my damn life!
“But then Thomas Ellington found you,” Celia murmured.
Nour’s lips pinched. “He stole my heart. I awoke to a world much changed—so much larger, yet smaller at the same time. The temple where I’d once gathered prayers was lost to sands.
Men with skin as pale as the moon were trying to dig it up again, so that they could send statues of gods to faraway lands…
Egypt had forgotten her old powers. And she was losing more every day… It made my blood boil.
“Thomas did not know what to do with me. I couldn’t exactly be shipped off to a museum.
I wanted to go back to sleep, but the man held my heart.
If anything happened to it, I would die, and the door to the Duat would open once more.
At first, Thomas did not want to give up his hold on me.
But as the weeks and months went on, he began to feel differently.
We both did. I found myself wanting to live again…
and he found he could not bear the thought of turning me over to his Order. ”
If there was a love story here, it was lost between the lines. Though Celia knew how subtle such things could be. How complicated. A heavy twang reminded her that, even though her heart was hiding in her chest, it was not safe.
“I knew I could not stay with Thomas forever—he had his wife back in England, and I had to hold the gate closed. But, for a short, sweet season, I decided to ignore such things. When Thomas handed back my heart, I put it inside my chest once more. I thought I could remove it again, whenever I wished. But then…” Nour’s hands fell down to her stomach—a phantom movement made even more ghostly by the swish of her sheer linen dress.
“I became with child. Hekamaat—the one you call Ezra—was born, and I felt my heart stolen again. This baby… this boy… He was my everything. I couldn’t bear to part from him.
At first, I promised myself I would only stay long enough to nurse him.
A year, at most. But then that year turned into another.
He grew his first pair of milk teeth and started calling me mut.
The roots of my heart reached too deep. Another year passed and Hekamaat was as rough and tumble as any boy his age might be.
Yet, I noticed something strange. No matter how hard his fall, he never seemed to skin his knees.
Any other mother would be overjoyed by this, but I began to feel an inescapable dread.
You see, the spell that had bound my life to the stones also protected it.
I could not be hurt by blade or arrow or any outside force.
But as I watched Hekamaat dust himself off without a scratch, I began to bite my nails bloody.
And then, one evening, I burned myself preparing supper.
“Something about the spell had changed… I feared this. But I did not believe it until the crocodile…” She took a shuddering breath.
“Hekamaat was playing too close to the river one day. There was a crocodile among the reeds, waiting. It struck before I could intervene. Any other child would have been snapped in half, but Hekamaat… He became light. That’s when I knew… ”
No, not my son. Do not take my son… Nour hadn’t been screaming at the crocodile after all.
“Ezra,” Celia said slowly. “Hekamaat is the key to the afterlife.”
Blue rippled around the chamber as Nour nodded.
“Somehow the spell left me and passed on to him in utero. He inherited a burden no child should bear—and there was no way for me to take the magic back into myself. My son’s life was tied to the stones that kept the dead at bay.
How do you explain such a thing to a six-year-old?
I tried to tell him the truth through bedtime stories, but I couldn’t bring myself to reach the end…
I couldn’t imagine his heart cut out or his small body placed in a sarcophagus to sleep until the end of time. He still had so much life ahead…
“Thomas agreed with me. He believed it would be best if Hekamaat was taken far from Egypt—raised without any knowledge of magic or the rest of his heritage. It broke my heart, but I thought, perhaps, that sending Hekamaat off to England to become Ezra would be best for everyone. He could grow up in blissful ignorance. I could search for a way to reabsorb the curse—and once I found it, I could tie my life force to the door once more and go back to being entombed without much fuss.”
Celia thought back to the train car, when their shadows had overlapped. All of their different layers of grief—gray on top of gray. “It wasn’t bliss. Your son still grieves you.”
Nour shut her eyes at this. All around them the chamber rippled with blue.
“Thomas did the best he could. I did too. I even took Hekamaat to the gate, when he was very young, to search for a way for me to reclaim the immurement magic. But for all my efforts, I could not spare Hekamaat the curse. It remains his alone.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him?” Celia’s voice was sharp. “Why did you snatch me off the street instead?”
“I wanted Ezra to live a little while longer, before…” Nour fell silent, her eyes darting to the chambers’ other inhabitants.
“Before you cut out your son’s heart?” Celia prodded.
The Ageless Ones sat with their legs crossed. Their eyes betrayed no emotion. Not the way Nour’s did. The woman looked both ruinous and anguished.
“There are others who would do worse,” she told Celia.
“The Order.”
Who else would she be talking about?