Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) (33 page)

“How long have I been asleep?” I’d been awake for all of three seconds, but I was impatient for the priestess sitting at my bedside to answer. I was impatient, but my stomach was desperate. “And might there be anything to eat?”

I was famished, and I felt lightheaded. No headache, though, which meant bonding withdrawals had yet to kick in. I couldn’t have been out for more than a couple hours, then, and while I felt as though I could sleep for days, the need for nourishment had overridden my exhaustion and roused me. I was still underweight, thanks to my regenerative abilities healing the damage to my body during childbirth and my minor head wound shortly after. Food was my number-one priority, getting home to my babies a close second.

The priestess—a different one from the skeptical young woman who’d found me in the inner sanctuary—offered me a reserved smile and a bow of her head. She was middle-aged, her onyx shoulder-length hair decorated with a delicate headband of woven gold thread and turquoise and quartz beads that reminded me of the one I’d worn the last time I was here, and she wore a simple, slightly loose-fitting white linen shift.

“There is food already set out for you, Golden One,” she said, her mastery of the original tongue impressive; she had almost no accent whatsoever. She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her line of sight to a table set out with a relative feast of fruits, bread, cheeses, and other things hidden in dishes that I couldn’t see clearly from my reclined angle. “I shall send for the roast and stew, if it pleases you. We did not wish for the scents to wake you.”

I stared at her for several seconds. That was how long it took my sluggish, sleepy mind to puzzle out that she was waiting for a response. “That—” I cleared my throat and propped myself up on my elbows. “That sounds lovely. Thank you.”

Again, the priestess smiled almost hesitantly. She stood and turned away from the bed, but I grabbed her wrist before she could leave.

“How long was I asleep?” I could see it was still night through the rectangular windows cut in the uppermost quarter of the wall, high above the table. But depending on the time of year, night could last a mere nine hours at this latitude or nearly fourteen—and five hours was a big difference when racing against the clock. I didn’t feel any hint of the bonding withdrawal headache yet, which had always been the first symptom for me, but I knew that once it started, I’d only have a matter of days to either get home or find Heru and soak up some of his bonding pheromones. If I didn’t, I would die and so would my chances of ever seeing my children again.

Get home. I could barely think about what that would entail. Traveling through time, that was a given—but if my recent stint in spatial shifts was anything to go by, my sheut’s time-jumping juice would prove to be equally weak, at least in comparison to what I was used to. I’d barely managed to cross two hundred miles in a night; how would I manage millennia between now and when the withdrawals killed me?

“The sun was born and died twice while you rested, Golden One,” the priestess said, only risking meeting my eyes for the briefest moment.

My heart stumbled, and for few seconds, I no longer felt hungry. “Two days,” I breathed, releasing her wrist. “I was out for two full days?” It wasn’t possible. That meant it had been three or four days since I’d last seen Heru. Bonding withdrawals should’ve been in full swing by now.

“Y—yes, Golden One.” The priestess bowed her head once more. “I shall return shortly,” she said and rushed out of the room.

“Wonderful.” I fell back onto the hard mattress and stared up at the plain white plaster ceiling, barely managing to fight off panic by focusing on the sound of my heart beating, on the whoosh of air in and out of my lungs.

“You are quite different from what I expected,” a woman said from the doorway. I recognized her voice as belonging to the younger priestess from before.

I tucked my arm behind my head, propping it up.

The priestess stood in the doorway, hands clasped before her. She wore a nearly identical shift and headband as the older, shyer priestess, the only deviation being the gold-plated amulet of a sun disk cradled in cattle horns on the front of her headband.

“You
must
be related to Denai,” I said. The head priestess I’d spent so much time with the last time I was here had had a particular je ne se quoi about her, something that this young priestess had in spades.

Her eyes widened. “I am Anai, head priestess of this temple. Denai was my grandmother.” She took a step into the room. “How did you know?”

I smiled, glad I finally had a clue as to the time period—we were in the First Intermediate Period, sometime during the Ninth or Tenth Dynasties, probably nearing the year 2100 BCE. “I spent a great deal of time with Denai once, many years ago,” I told Anai. “You remind me of her.” I suppressed a laugh. “Though perhaps a little more spirited.” I didn’t tell her that one day, thousands of years from now, I would meet another head priestess of this order named Anai, possibly one of this Anai’s descendants.

“I—you really are—my grandmother spoke of you often.” Anai crossed the room and sat in the chair at my bedside, bowing her head. “Please, Golden One, tell me how I can serve you.”

“Pshhh . . .” I waved a hand dismissively. “By not doing all the bowing and scraping, for starters.” I sat up and turned so my legs dangled over the edge of the bed. The slightest amount of weight on my shaking legs told me I wouldn’t make it to the table of food on my own. “And a shoulder to lean on would be much appreciated, as well.”

Anai lifted her head, her expression quizzical but her eyes determined. “Of course, Golden One.” She slipped an arm around my waist and used her other hand to grip mine.

“‘Hat-hur’ is fine,” I told her as we slowly made our way to the table. “‘Golden One’ is nice and all, but it is just so . . .” I made a “yuck” face, which earned me a giggle.

“Very well, Hat-hur.” Anai left me at the table, my hands on the tabletop to keep me standing, while she retrieved the chair from the bedside. In true Egyptian fashion, there wasn’t an extravagance of furniture in the room—just the bed, the chair, and the table. “There,” she said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “You may sit now.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed a fig from the nearest dish and popped the entire thing into my mouth. In my defense, it was on the smaller side, as figs go. I held a hand over my mouth as I chewed and looked up at Anai. “Are you hungry?” I motioned to the spread with my other hand. “Feel free to join in.”

I swallowed, tossing a torn-off piece of flatbread into my mouth. While I chewed that, I leaned forward and retrieved an earthenware pitcher from the center of the table and gave it a sniff. Wine—light, fruity, and barely alcoholic. I poured it into an alabaster goblet, quickly falling into a pattern of shoving food into my mouth and washing it down with gulps of wine.

Anai watched me from the end of the table, a tiny nugget of cheese in her hand and her eyes opened wide.

“Sorry,” I said between a gulp of wine and another bite. “I still seem to be recovering from—” My explanation caught in my throat as I thought of the twins, my precious newborns, who could be with anybody right now. With my hunger partially sated, the need to find them became all-consuming.
They’re with Marcus,
I told myself.
Please let them be with Marcus 
. . .

I cleared my throat. “I was injured, and though my kind heal quickly, it uses up a lot of energy.”

“I see,” Anai said, taking the tiniest nibble of cheese.

I continued my gorging, though at a slightly more moderate pace. I took a short break while a couple priestesses brought in warm dishes—a thick, savory lentil soup, some sort of roasted fowl, and a spicy stew that tasted like beef, only gamier. It seemed to take forever to sate my hunger, but in time I was finally, blissfully full.

I stood, legs feeling strong and steady but eyelids drooping. I was tempted to fight against the regenerative sleep, but I wagered that once the bonding withdrawals hit, I would need to be at full strength. And I would have to survive the withdrawals if I were to have any chance of making it home to my family.

So I ambled back to the bed and practically collapsed onto the hard, thin mattress, already asleep by the time my feet left the floor.

***

“Anai?”

“I am here, Golden—Hat-hur.”

I opened my eyes, turning my head to look at her. She’d returned to the chair at my bedside. I had no idea how long she’d been sitting there, patiently watching over me while I slept, let alone how long I’d been asleep. I was almost afraid to ask. At least, I still felt no sign of bonding withdrawals. “How long was I asleep this time?”

“It is midday,” Anai said, glancing at the open-air windows near the top of the wall. The light streaming in through the openings was crisp, bright, and golden. “You have been asleep for six or seven hours.”

I took a deep breath, blowing it out as I sat up. Could’ve been worse. I stretched, easing the aches and kinks caused by the thin mattress and from sleeping without a pillow. I’d never grown accustomed to the hard headrests used by these ancient people, and I’d been too tired to bother making any kind of a pillow before passing out.

My stomach groaned, but with a usual hunger, not that desperate appetite specific to the regenerative process. It looked like I was healthy enough; it was time to get on with my journey.

I picked away at a spread of food nearly identical to the first, taking bites between packing in preparation to leave. I wrapped up less-perishable food items in the oilcloths saved from my previous stash of provisions and tucked them into my bag, then washed up using the small washing stand and toiletry chest in one corner of the room. Finally, I donned my sword harness.

She eyed the sword, one eyebrow raised. When she made that expression, she looked so very much like her grandmother; I hid a smile. “Will you be meeting the others of your kind in Abdju?”

“Abdju?” It was the ancient Egyptian name for Abydos, one of the oldest cities in this land. It was located in Upper Egypt—or
southern
Egypt—and, most notably to this era, was the location of Pepi I’s funerary temple, which would blossom into a great temple of Osiris in the years to come. I had no idea why she would expect me to go there.

“When last Aset visited,” Anai said, “she mentioned that the Netjer-Ats would be gathering in Abdju for the succession.”

I paused in adjusting the harness’s straps—I’d filled out a bit during my stay here—and stared at Anai. “Apologies, but I have been out of touch for some time.
What
succession?”

“Now that Osiris has passed on,” Anai said, “it is time to lay him to rest and decide on the next leader of the Netjer-Ats.” Remotely, I wondered if that was why the temple at Abdju would one day become a cult center for the worship of Osiris—because he’d supposedly been laid to rest there. “Aset explained that the contest was between Heru and Set, though she felt certain Heru would emerge victorious.”

The blood drained from my face, and my heart went cold.

That
succession. The one where Heru
did
win, but two days after he was instated as leader of the Council of Seven, he was attacked by Set and nearly killed. The one where he’d only survived because Aset had stepped in, distracting Set while her people carried Heru off to safety. The one where Aset was supposed to have died. At least, according to the rest of the world.

“How long ago was Aset here?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“A month ago, perhaps . . . maybe longer?” So, in ancient terms, at least thirty days, but maybe more.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that I was here, now. According to Marcus, Aset had sacrificed herself to save him, but what if that wasn’t the whole story? Marcus—Heru, at the time—had been blinded in Set’s attack, not to mention wounded so severely that he’d been near death. He’d hardly been in any position to remember everything that had happened. To remember if I’d been there.

And I no longer believed in coincidence. This past year had cured me of that. If I was here, now, there was a reason.

I finished adjusting the leather harness. “The Netjer-Ats are meeting in Abdju, you said?”

Anai nodded.

I lifted my bag’s strap over my head, settling it on my shoulder, then followed with my waterskin. “Do you know where, exactly?”

“The Temple of Osiris, of course.” So apparently the transformation of Pepi I’s funerary temple had already begun.

“Of course,” I said under my breath. It didn’t really matter—the shift there was going to stretch my limits regardless. Abdju was about four hundred miles south of Men-Nefer, over four times as long as my farthest spatial shift, the one that had all but knocked me unconscious.

I crossed the room to stand before Anai, taking her hands in mine. “Thank you, truly, for everything.” I leaned in, kissing her on either cheek and leaving her absolutely stunned. “I apologize for leaving in such a hurry, but there is somewhere I must be. It is a matter of grave importance.”

“I—it was a pleasure to serve you, Golden One.”

“Farewell, Anai.” I took a couple steps backward, dropped to one knee, and placed one hand on the floor while gripping the hilt of my sword, just over my shoulder, with the other. “May all of your daughters be as strong and loyal as you.” Bowing my head, I closed my eyes and focused on, instead of a place, a person: Aset.