Cleopatra's Secret: Keepers of the LIght (13 page)

Antony’s eyes were still fixed on the sarcophagus. “Whose tomb is that?”

“It is where you must go.”

He had known that somehow, but her calm assurance only made him more uneasy.

Her voice was as serene and melodious as ever. “You understand that it’s yours to occupy now.”

He turned to her for some kind of explanation, but she only arched a brow and smiled. “The Roman general is not afraid?”

He was afraid. He was seized by all manner of unnamed terrors, but he could never let her know.

Before he really understood what was happening, Antony found himself stepping into the sarcophagus. With his heart pumping he lay back against the rough stone interior, barely able to squeeze his large frame into the narrow space.

For a moment Cleopatra stood over him, her hypnotic eyes burning bright as emeralds, but her expression still calm and cool as any of her dead ancestors resting in the coffins next to his. She raised her arms and spoke in some language he had never heard before. Her voice echoed through the empty chamber as he lay paralyzed as a rat caught in a serpent’s death spell.

As the last words of her incantation faded away in the silent chamber, Cleopatra looked down at him and stroked his cheek with a tenderness he had only seen her display with young Caesarion. “Now you learn the Mystery of Death.”

Using both hands to manage its weight, Cleopatra pushed the heavy lid closed.

Every nerve screamed and his fist thrust forward to stop the stone from falling, but it was too late.

He was trapped.

Antony tried to move but the space pushed against his limbs, and the more constricted he found himself, the more frantic he became. The sickening feeling of his quick breaths coming back at him from the lid pressing against his face, and his heart thundering like chariot horses through his chest, made his panic worse. He struggled ferociously, uselessly.

Let him die free fighting on the battlefield. He did not fear that. But here, like this? There was nothing to fight. Nowhere to go. Nothing but this choking, paralyzing terror. He could feel his mind growing crazed with the primal urge to just get out. To survive. Just to breathe again!

Interminable hours passed as he struggled with all his furious strength and will to wrestle his way out. But he was bound by stone and darkness. Left with no air and only the thinnest thread of sanity.

Strength and will had failed. Everything he possessed was useless to him now. Colors flashed in the darkness of his oxygen-starved brain. He could barely feel his cold limbs as his asphyxiating body numbed. Closing his eyes, he at last released his muscles from their vain fight.

A deep, still serenity slowly settled over him, warm and comforting, lulling his heart now that he had truly surrendered. There was a gentle tugging at his chest, his soul itching to depart. Expelling a final ghost of a breath from his empty lungs, he yielded to death’s embrace....

At first there was nothing.

Then the faintest sound of water lapping and vague shadows of pearl gray mist began to swirl before his eyes. His feet touched cool, moist earth and the phantom reeds bordering the river swayed gently by the wind, brushed his skin as he walked along a fog-drenched shoreline. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs to the brim with the soft, watery air.

The slow, rhythmic splash of a paddle propelling a small boat along the river drew his attention. The Jackal God’s dark form stood out against the silver currents as he ferried his boat towards the horizon where a beautiful light streamed above the waterline.

Flooded with relief, Antony called out, “Guide! Take me with you!”

But Anubis slid past in his ebony boat, headed towards the radiance at the end of the river.

Possessed by a sudden urgent desire to see the light, Antony began to run. If only he could reach that light all would be well. But it seemed as if the harder he pushed himself, the farther away the horizon grew.

He stopped, panting for breath, and the song of the river filled his ears. He had never noticed the beauty of it before, its tinkling shallows and deep rich currents entwined in an endless variety of notes and rhythms. A smile of pure childlike happiness spread across his face as the wind picked up the melody and even the bright pinpricks of the emerging stars vibrated their own bell-like chorus.

The Song echoed from everywhere and everything, and yet it also seemed to come from a place to the north where the twilight mists hung like gauze curtains over an image still obscured.

Reluctantly tearing himself from the fading light, he pushed his way through the reeds, away from the river’s edge, towards the shimmering fog. As he reached the entrance of a lush grove, the crisp north wind swept away the mists, revealing deep green leaves sparkling with fresh dew and ancient twisting tree limbs. The silver-blue light of a crescent moon met the warm apricot tones of the setting sun as both hung suspended in rainbow hues over the ring of cypress trees.

Antony pushed aside a tangle of entwined roses to step inside the magic circle where the true throne of Egypt awaited him.

She sat amidst the blooming purple iris and fresh green grass. Her flowing silver robes wrapped around every sensuous curve of her body, her black hair spilling across lush exposed breasts, a shining crescent moon crowning her brow. With eyes as green and impenetrable as Nile water, Isis met his gaze.

Antony went to her. Like a tired child coming to rest against his mother, he laid his head on her lap and closed his eyes. He felt her stroke back his hair with gentle, nurturing fingers. Her soothing touch erased everything from his mind, leaving it open as the reflecting ponds in Cleopatra’s moonlight garden at Lochias Palace, no more then a smooth surface for impressions to play upon.

Images came.

A screaming phoenix flying in a glory of gold and scarlet plumes left trails of fire as it circled in the night and nova-bright stars swam around him in the heavens.

Out of the chaos arose the ancient Gods, materializing like melted starlight falling to the earth. The most powerful of them all, Osiris, conversed with a naked woman in a barren field. She shivered in the cold night without a fire or clothing to warm her. She seemed barely human to Antony, with her tangled, dirty hair and grunting speech. But Osiris whispered secret knowledge in her ear as he gently caressed her breast, his hand trailing down her belly to between her legs, and as he rubbed her rosy flower, he continued to speak magic in low intimate tones. She arched her body back against the cold ground and Osiris straddled her, planting the seed of the Gods in her womb.

Antony watched from his place out of time as the woman grew ripe and gave birth to twins: a boy and a girl. The Gods clothed them in tunics of spun gold and placed the crowns of Egypt upon their shining black hair. Isis raised them up and set them on thrones. The barren land grew cultivated before Antony’s eyes into acres of rippling wheat, orchards ripe with heavy fruit and carefully tended pleasure gardens where the Gods and mortals alike took their repose.

Thoth, the ibis-headed God of all learning and knowledge, covered the walls of the temples with symbols, teaching the priests and priestesses the meaning of hieroglyphics. Antony watched as their knowledge and laws were hewn into the limestone––never to be forgotten.

As the roll of time rushed forward, royal brothers married their sisters, and the pharaoh married his daughter, and the wife her sons, down through the gilded generations; always keeping the divine bloodline of the Gods alive upon the throne that ruled the earth.

At the appointed hour, the radiant ones began to melt back into the shimmering light, until only their pale outlines shone in the gold and white of the horizon. The Gods had vanished from the earth.

Except for Isis.

The Great Mother hung back. Antony could feel her overpowering love, connecting her too deeply to her children to desert them so quickly. His heart ached with gratitude that she had not left them. Not left him.

The vision began to shift again, like tidal pools swirling. All fell away except for Her. Isis. Cleopatra.

Antony raised his head from her lap, the lap that was the throne of Egypt, and the chronic longing for her filled him up as it had that night on her barge in Tarsus. But now his passion was mixed with the desire to posses this divine throne, to become one with the race of Gods. He would have her and all the divinity he could drink from her honeyed lips. He would drown himself in the ambrosia of the Gods!

Deliberately, he rose from his knees, and pulling her to him, claimed his place upon the throne. She straddled him and he gripped her ripe fullness in his fists. He felt a rush of power surge through him. A golden cobra coiled around her hand. The serpent slithered through the curves of their entwined bodies as they came together, entering her as Antony did.

He thrust harder, the magic swirling around them like a cyclone, and through the sound of blood pounding in his ears and his own cries of pleasure, he heard her low voice whispering, “Keeper Of The Light, I will tell you now the secret name of God.”

She spoke it into his mind, into his heart, into every cell of his body and blinding fire erupted in him. He was nothing more than a raw nerve of chaos. Lightning shot through his spine burning away his consciousness. Golden light poured down, filling him, surpassing any beauty he had ever seen.

And now he could hear again the Song, but so much sweeter than before. The soul of the universe, and all that existed in it, vibrating together in this ecstatic divine music, its notes mixing together in a blend where melodies intertwined and then melted away into each other in a celestial Song that grew louder and louder, until it filled his entire being. The golden Light burned. Everything made sense. Everything was right. Always and only this forever…

***

Antony bolted up, drenched in sweat, to find himself in Cleopatra's tent. Disoriented, he looked around but everything was in peace. Cleopatra lay by his side, her face serene and breathtaking in repose.

He mopped his brow with the corner of the fine linen sheet as his heart began to slow to a quieter rhythm. He shuffled his pillows around, preparing to lie down again, when he noticed in the streaming blue moonlight outside the tent flap, a jackal peered in, his intelligent eyes glimmering as he looked straight at Antony.

For one moment the wild desert dog stood there, then it gave a strange low whine and trotted off across the moon-drenched sand and out of sight.

Antony made his way to the tent flap and looked up at the glittering night sky. He had never really seen it before. How had he missed such beauty and failed to be filled with wonder, until now? The soft night breeze kissed his face and he knew he would never experience the world the same way again.

***

At dawn they rose and the party made their way to the same mortuary temple Antony had visited in his dream the night before. There stood the statue of Anubis and the wall paintings of Isis and Osiris with the silver star next to them. Early morning sunlight streamed in the shaft from above instead of glittering stars.

Apollodorus burned incense in the offering bowl at the God’s feet and Antony noticed there was no fabulous ruby there, but then he did not see it gracing Cleopatra’s hand either. She caught his eye and smiled at him reassuringly as they chanted the morning hymns.

As they proceeded out of the temple, Apollodorus walked by his side. “Our Pyramids are places of special magic, are they not, Lord Antony?”

“Indeed, they are.” Antony felt strange and unsure of everything this morning.

“Egypt's rites and magic stretch back to the First Time, when the Gods walked the earth. It was on their direction that these monuments were built. Even your Roman engineers, with their impressive roads and aqueducts, could not recreate this.” He proudly gestured towards the Pyramids now drenched in morning sunlight. “The Queen of Heaven’s blood runs back to the First Time through her mother, who was High Priestess before Cleopatra. One with such a lineage has special gifts.”

Antony thought back to his vision of Osiris making love to the human woman. The dream became real again for a lucid moment and danced before him in the shimmering desert sand. He believed now, as he never believed before, in a divine force. Having been raised like most Romans to pay homage to the Gods, he went through the expected rituals, but only as one might throw a coin in a sacred well for luck before a toss of the dice or on the eve of battle. He had never truly possessed faith.

Even when he felt Dionysus inhabit his body, he had written it off the next morning as the work of the priestess’s herbs, the wild night and Cleopatra's magnetism. Perhaps he had admitted somewhere deep inside a divine force entered him that night, but nothing one could really give a name to. After all, he had never seen Dionysus with his own eyes.

Now, though frustratingly it seemed to have escaped his mind, Antony knew the secret name of God and he was beginning to understand there were worlds and mysteries which existed beyond normal perception. There was tangible evidence in the living breathing form of Cleopatra. Viewing her against the backdrop of her heritage, Antony suddenly felt an awe of her. He understood now why villagers and courtiers alike fell on their knees when she passed. She was more than a woman, or a queen. She was the living breathing Goddess who roamed the earth––or at least, a part of her was.