Every Last Kiss, Final Copy, June 30, 2011 (19 page)

        “How do you know these passage ways so well, my queen?” I asked curiously.  “I don’t recall coming down here with you.”

        “Well, my love, you aren’t nobility, are you?” she answered a touch smugly.  “I learned these routes from my father during the Cyprus uprisings.  We memorized escape routes.” She glanced at my face and added, “And don’t worry about not being nobility- you aren’t missing much.  At least your siblings haven’t tried to kill you.”

        I had to smile.  It was true.  Each of her sisters, Arsinoë and Berenice had tried to have her assassinated.  I could remember even back in our nursery days, Cleopatra had been afraid to drink or eat things that had been sitting around her sisters- for fear that they would try to poison her.  It wasn’t the most emotionally healthy way to grow up.

        In fact, her sister Berenice had tried to overthrow their own father for the throne, but failed.  He had her beheaded soon after.  So much for close family ties, although Cleopatra’s relationship with their father was much better… mainly because she respected his authority and made it clear from the get-go that she only wanted to learn how to make Egypt grow.  It was apparent from the time she was small that Egypt was her top priority.   

        She had disliked her little brothers because she felt that they were useless. They were spoiled and lazy- and she had little use for that.  She had spent her days growing up learning languages, Egyptian custom and educating herself.  Her brothers had spent theirs whining, playing and backbiting. 

        Regardless, Cleopatra had always denied to me that she had her little brother Ptolemy XIV killed. The physicians weren’t able to determine a cause of death, although they suspected poison.  Cleopatra swore to me at the time that it hadn’t been her- and I believed her. She had never lied to me.  There was no point- she didn’t answer to me.  And besides, Arsinoë was much more ruthless than Cleopatra.  It could just as easily have been her. 

        “Why are you so distracted, Charmian?” Cleopatra asked curiously as we walked.  “You seem to be miles away from here.”

        “You are very perceptive, my queen,” I smiled.  “I was just remembering your childhood.  It’s a wonder that we made it this far with all of the deception and murderous trickery.  We probably should have been dead long ago.”

        “Bite your tongue, Charmian!” she exclaimed softly.  “Things happened the way that they were supposed to happen.   Isn’t that the song you keep singing?  My sisters were vipers, only out for their own profit.  My brothers were pathetic.  None of them had Egypt’s good at heart.”  She made a
pfft
noise as she wrinkled her nose in disdain. 

        I nodded.  “I know, Cleopatra.  But I’m still surprised that we have made it this far.”

        “Well, let us not muck everything up now, my sweet.”  At her words, she stopped outside of an inscribed door, the short train of her deep purple sheath dress dragging on the floor.  The Serapeum. Temple to the goddess Serapis.  I turned to Cleopatra in apprehension. 

        “Cleopatra, Ahmose has very powerful magic.  The fact that he is sending us here to Annen, makes me nervous.  I can’t imagine how powerful this priest must be if he possesses knowledge that Ahmose does not. Let us tread lightly in here.” 

        She nodded solemnly in agreement before she pushed the door inward and we walked through.  Almost immediately, a priest appeared in the doorway, his face startled.  As soon as he saw Cleopatra, however, he dropped to his knees, face down on the sandstone floor.

        “My queen,” he murmured into the stone.  “We didn’t expect you today.  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you.” 

        “Please rise,” she commanded.  “We’re here on a whim.”

        The priest rose from his knees, holding onto the wall to steady himself.  He was older, his face lined with wrinkles.  In the typical custom of the priests, his head was closely shaven.  Writing and designs were carefully drawn upon his bare arms and chest with kohl, the moist blackness starting to smear only along the edges.

        “My queen, how can we assist you?”

        The priest was certainly eager to please her, his black eyes anxiously waiting for her orders.  He had started to back down the hallway leading into the bowels of the temple.  Already, the heady scent of the incense was beginning to envelop us. 

        “I am searching for someone.  The priest, Annen.  Have you seen him?”

        The priest froze, apprehension clearly written all over him.  “Your majesty?”

        “Annen,” Cleopatra repeated firmly.  “Is he here?”

        I could see on the priest’s face that he was.  I waited patiently to see if the priest would confirm it. After just a moment, he did. 

        “Yes, my queen,” he murmured with a small bow of his head.  “He is.  Follow me and I will take you to him immediately.”

        Cleopatra threw me a sidelong glance and I followed her up the long inclined hallway.  We passed the enormous oblong room that served as a library for Alexandria… it was crammed full of thousands of rolled up papyrus scrolls, shelf after shelf of them.   Yet another archeological find that would never be discovered.  I shook my head at the loss.  It seemed so senseless that these important things would be destroyed by ignorant soldiers…it was simply the way it would work out.  But it was still a pity.

        We passed every main underground room and the priest led us into a darkened section.  I felt myself tense up.  Since I knew that Pothinus was lurking somewhere around Alexandria, my protective instincts were on overdrive. The cold darkness under this temple caused my hackles to rise.  I didn’t like the feeling.

        Entering a small, poorly lit room at the end of a deserted hall, I could just barely make out the silhouette of a hooded man seated behind a desk, surrounded by scrolls.  I could tell that he looked up as we approached, but I couldn’t see his face.

        “Annen?”  The priest approached him tentatively, almost reverently. “Queen Cleopatra is here to see you.”

        “Of course.  Thank you, my friend.” Annen stood before he lowered himself carefully onto the ground in front of Cleopatra.  I could practically hear his old bones creak.

        “Your highness,” he uttered.

        “Annen, it is good to see you. Please rise,” Cleopatra instructed.  “We’ve been searching for you.  We have heard that you may possess knowledge that we are in need of.”

        Well, so much for small talk.  But Annen didn’t seem bothered.  He nodded understandingly, almost as though he expected it… and us, for that matter. 

        “Of course you have,” he agreed.  “I am glad that you have come.”

        He rose from the floor and lit an oil lamp on the desk.  I didn’t bother to ask him why he had been sitting in the dark.   As a High Priest, he did many strange things, I was sure.  My mind flitted back to that pesky cannibalism rumor and I shuddered.   I reminded myself that it was just a rumor.  I couldn’t prove it.

        Looking at Annen now, though, I wouldn’t doubt it.  He was so creepy that it was chilling and that was putting it mildly.  It wasn’t just his appearance, although that was unnerving enough.  His slanted obsidian eyes were fathomless, bottomless.  They glittered with unexplainable knowledge, missing nothing. His fingers were long and crooked and the backs of his wrinkled hands were tattooed with incantations to Anubis.  Looking at him gave me shivers. 

        Annen turned his black gaze to me now, making me uncomfortable.  It felt as though he was looking directly into my thoughts.

        “Charmian, my lady, you do not wish to be here,” he observed.  “Do not trouble yourself.  No harm will come to you here,” he said reassuringly. 

        He patted my arm and the curls of his nails scraped the soft skin of my wrist, touching the outline of my birthmark.  I tried not to shudder.   

        His eyes darted to mine as he quickly lifted my wrist and examined it. I could feel the exhale of his moist breath on my skin.  

        “My mother was a Keeper in your honorable organization, my lady. Did you know that?” He released my arm gently and clasped his hands, staring at me again with his knowing eyes.  

        “You lie,” I accused, my cheeks instantly flushing with agitation. “Keepers cannot bear children.”  I heard Cleopatra’s sudden gasp but ignored it. 

        “That is true,” he admitted. “I apologize, my lady.  I misspoke.  I should have specified that she was my
adopted
mother.  She raised me from the time I was an infant and she was the only mother I knew.”

        My alarm quelled slightly.  He wasn’t lying. 
Adoption.
  Briefly, it seemed like a good idea.  But it wasn’t feasible.  I was fated to die an untimely death in every life.  That wasn’t exactly fair to a child. 

        “She explained her role to you?  She broke her vows?”

        He stared at me gently, his face suddenly kind. 

        “My lady, when did you ever take vows?  You were simply born to be what you are.  You’ve never chosen such a thing. Your vows, so to speak, were inherent.”

        My throat tightened.  How right he was.  I had certainly never chosen. 

        “But you can change it,” he added.  “The bloodstone is very, very powerful.  Using it, you can change your situation.  You can disavow the Order and live a normal life- a life that doesn’t end in tragedy.  If you choose,” he added.

        “I am weary of listening to this!” I snapped. “You have brought me here to a place where I should no longer be… and to make it worse, you brought Pothinus here as well, and now the treacherous snake has stolen my bloodstone.”   

        “Ah, Pothinus the eunuch,” Annen sighed.  “That poor soul is lost.  He is evil through and through.  There’s no hope for him.”

        Bewildered, I stared at him.  “Then why would you reveal the Order’s secrets to him?  Your
mother’s
secrets?”

        “I did no such thing,” he objected, his black eyes flashing.  “Before he died, he unearthed secret scrolls that were well-hidden, scrolls about the Order.  He already knew.  I only brought him here so that you could see that if you chose a different path, it wouldn’t matter.  But things are going so wrong.”

        He stared at Cleopatra.  “I’m sorry, my queen.  I have failed you.”

        “Why do you say that?” Cleopatra asked softly. 

        She had seated herself behind Annen’s desk, her slender legs curled beneath her.  As she spoke, she sifted absently through the piles of scrolls. 

        She unrolled another scroll, gazing at the scrawling Egyptian written in bold, black ink.  I only caught a glimpse of scrawled incantations to Anubis before Annen gasped and hurried around the desk, gathering it away from her with his talon-like fingers. 

        “I’m sorry, my queen.  I mean no disrespect, but there is some magic that is much too dangerous for you to be exposed to.”  He quickly rolled it back up and stacked it with the mounds of others along the wall behind him. 

        “If it is so dangerous, Annen, perhaps you should not leave it out in the open,” Cleopatra admonished lightly, but she didn’t ask any further questions about it.  She turned to me. 

        “Charmian, what else would you like to ask this priest?”  Her face was drenched in weariness and I found myself wishing that I could take her concern away for her.  But I couldn’t, because I felt it myself.

        “I want to know how I am going to get back home if we can’t retrieve my bloodstone from the eunuch. And I’d like to retrieve it
before
he uses it for something horrible.”

        “My lady, I thought you knew.  Your bloodstone is tied to you, in every way.  There is no way that Pothinus can use the magic of your bloodstone unless you are present and wearing it.  On that same note, there is also no way that you can leave here without it.”

        I felt a lead weight drop into my stomach and I stared wordlessly at him. 

        “Why?” I whispered. “Why have you done this?  In bringing me here, you have wrecked everything that I have worked for for so long.”

        He nodded miserably.  “Yes, my lady.  I know.  I have failed our queen and I have failed you.  I meant only to help, to help you escape what killed my mother…” his voice trailed off as he dropped to his knees, his ancient back curving as he groveled at Cleopatra’s feet.

“Please forgive me, your highness,” he begged.  “I did not mean to inflict this onto you.”

        “Please stand,” she asked, pulling at his arm.  “We need your help now, not theatrics. I am sure you meant no harm.”

        He raised sad eyes to her.  “No, my queen, I meant only to help. I saw the future and I knew what would happen if I did nothing.  But now it is being used against Egypt and I am very sorry for that.”

        “You meant no harm,” I murmured.  “What else can you tell us?”

        “What else would you like to know?” He rose slowly to his feet and folded his hands in front of him, waiting for the onslaught of questions as the light from the lamp flickered on the wall behind him.

        “Annen, we have to get my bloodstone back from Pothinus.  Speed is of the essence now.  I will discuss the secrets of the Order with  you later… I am curious as to what you know that I do not. But for now, I need my bloodstone.”

        Annen shifted his wise gaze from me to the queen and then back again, eerily calm.  When he finally spoke, it wasn’t reassuring. 

        “My lady, I will happily speak to you at any time that you wish.  But you should know that your situation right now is certainly dire.  Maybe even more so than you realize.”

        Cleopatra and I eyed each other apprehensively.  How could it be even more dire? 

        He turned to face me before he continued, impaling me with his intense stare.  He shook his head and my gaze was drawn to the large black discs in his earlobes.  They had to be at least two inches in diameter.  Amazing. It must have taken years to work up to that size.  Gazing at his gnarled hands and wrinkled face, I tried to imagine how old he was.