Shadows on the Aegean (8 page)

Aside from her height and her red hair, Chloe was unrecognizable.

Camille
still
felt responsible. She also wasn’t sure she even liked her sister anymore.

“Who is winning?” Chloe asked, resting her long-fingered hands on Clyde’s shoulders. Cammy pitied him: he was obviously fighting
for composure, and when Chloe began kneading his shoulders, telling him how tense he was, Cammy wanted to scream. Deliberately
she lost her hand and yawned.

Clyde, with his Carolina manners, rose immediately. Holding his jean jacket in front of him, he wished them both a good day.
Chloe brushed a kiss on his cheek, and he stumbled from the room, crashing into Fatima and making his confusion worse. The
door slammed behind him, and Cammy listened to his footsteps retreating up the hall.

“What a geek!” Chloe said, throwing herself into the chair by the bed.

“If you don’t like him, why do you lead him on?”

She shrugged. “It amuses me.”

“He’s a colleague of mine, but more important he’s a nice, sweet, aboveboard guy. Leave him alone, Chloe.”

“He’s a big boy. If he doesn’t want to play, he will tell me.”

He doesn’t stand a chance with you, Cammy thought. You’ve turned into a man-eating predator! “Do you and Phaemon have holiday
plans?”

Chloe frowned for a moment, as though she didn’t understand Camille.

“Is he joining us in Santorini?” Cammy said.

Her sister’s fair skin flushed a little. “Phaemon is another religion, not sharing in these holidays, so I will be with him.”

“What religion is he? Do you realize that you’ve been with him almost a year and I’ve never officially met him?”
Other than the time I walked in on you two having sex in my bedroom and you invited me to join you
. Cammy felt her own cheeks heat. What had happened to Chloe? It was enough to make one believe in alien abductions, she thought,
glancing at the tabloid.

Chloe dug into a stack of fashion magazines she’d brought. “He is rather, uh, shy.”

“What does he do? Where is he from? Phaemon is an interesting name, ancient almost.…”

“You are very inquisitive this morning, Cammy. You are feeling better, and this is how you repay my willingness to drive halfway
across this barren land to be with you?” Chloe’s voice was raised, her brown eyes unreadable.

The tension hovered while Chloe flipped through her magazines and Cammy replayed her words. She hadn’t been that harsh, had
she? Weary from unease, she closed her eyes and turned toward the window. What she wouldn’t give to be back on her dig.

Gold, dust, darkness … What had she seen?

ANCIENT EGYPT

U
SER-AMUN SIGHED AND SCRATCHED HIS HEAD
. His scalp itched. The solution that felt so refreshing when his head was just shaved made it itch horribly once it was dry.
He rubbed his wiry fingers along the base of his neck and behind his ears. A loud meow made him open his eyes. His cat, Ner,
sat before him. “You think I should pet you before scratching myself?” he asked, running his fingers over her pointed ears
until the low resonance of her purr filled the room.

Someone knocked at his door; User bade him enter. The priest was young, not fifteen Inundations, his pale brown eyes wide.
“Life, prosperity, and health to you, noble User-Amun,
netter
of the House of Life. I am to bid you come to the temple. There has been an accident.”

User placed Ner on the floor and rose, tightening his sash around his sagging belly. “What kind of accident?” he asked, pulling
vials and ointments from the shelves that lined the room.

“A man, trampled by an Apis bull,” the boy said. “There was another, but she is dead.”

The physician turned, pausing for a moment. “This man still lives?”

“He was pressed into manure and mud,” the boy said. “He managed to shield his face and let the mud take his body. Still, he
has traveled far in his journey to the Afterworld.” The boy looked down. “Even now he may be at Anubis’ gates.”

User handed his heavy parcels to the boy and drew the door closed behind them. “Which priest is it, son?”

The boy shrugged. “I know not, my lord.”

After the appropriate greetings, User was led to the victim. One look at the man’s body and the physician knew any aid would
be in vain. Burning with fever, he was near death. His pulse was jumpy, his body stinking of manure. Bruises mottled his chest,
legs, and arms. He would not live; it would be a waste of time and energies to care for him. The living needed the little
food available in this time of famine. Better to let him embrace Anubis. “How did you find him?” User asked.

“He was lying on his belly in the mud, his face turned into his shoulder, his hands protecting his sex,” the priest said.

User picked up one of the victim’s long-fingered hands and saw a heavy tiger’s eye—and-gold scarab ring. Was this man a royal
scribe to wear such fine jewelry? He had hair, so he was certainly no priest. Two of four fingers were broken; at least User-Amun
could set them. When he pried open the man’s fist, a string-tied papyrus package fell from his palm.

Using linen bandages, ointment, and heavy rush stems, User flattened the man’s hand into something resembling human. It would
not do to enter the underworld without use of one’s left hand. He prayed in a sonorous tone from the Book of the Dead: “
‘Fix tightly the bones in my neck and back. Let the linens embrace me.’ ”

User ran sensitive hands over the body. Though the lung was not pierced, a rib or two were broken. The man’s ankle was swollen,
and User administered cooling waters and bandages for it. “Give him to the House of Eternity,” he said. “He sleeps too deeply
and his wounds are too extreme. He will die soon.
’Together my arm, wrist, and elbow are joined,’”
he intoned.

The priests covered his body and prepared to carry him. “My lord,” the
sem
-priest said, “there is also a woman to take to the House of Eternity.’

“A woman?” User frowned at the man. How did a woman come to be in the bowels of the sacred bull’s running ground in an all-male
temple? Beckoning, the man walked into another room. Again the stink of manure.

She was so mangled that even in the afterlife her body would be of no use to her. Hooves had pounded her body into a pulp,
bruised beyond identification. “No rings, no indication of who she was?” User asked.

“Nay, my lord. All of the priests on duty have been questioned.”

“Her linen is fine stuff,” User-Amun said, touching the once bright sash wrapped around her waist. Good-quality leather sandals
shod her feet, and her hair was real, not a wig. User looked more closely at her body.

Strangely enough, neither of the victims had the appearance of famine sufferers. Both were firmly built, with clear skin beneath
the muck, hair that was lustrous and well rooted in the scalp. User picked an instrument out of his basket and opened the
woman’s mouth.

The priest hissed in shock. Never had either of them seen such healthy teeth! Strong, white, and not even one missing! Fear
pricked User-Amun’s spine, and he made a gesture against the Evil Eye. Her face was pummeled, her eyes blackened. On pure
impulse he drew back an eyelid.

In his thirty Inundations of serving the House of Life, User had never been so frightened. “Isis! Protectress!” he pleaded.

The woman’s eyes were blank. Not just sunken or rolled into her head. She had
no
irises … just white orbs.

The priest had stepped away, fingering his
udjet
eye amulet. User looked at the woman’s body again. Something unearthly was being played here.

“When was she found?”

“The twenty-third of Phamenoth.”

The most fearful day in the Egyptian calendar.
Khaibits
, fanged shades, and
khefts
, laughing demons, roamed the night. Unexplainable things happened. Wise men locked their doors and prayed for Ra’s light.
Why had the priests waited so long to summon him? Death was so common in the two lands now that even the priesthood was behind
schedule. “Destroy her,” he said in an undertone.

“My lord?”

“Her
ka
fled her body before death. Her eyes, the windows of her soul, are empty. She is a shell, abandoned. Her body is broken,
of no use in the afterlife. Something beyond our knowing has happened.” He looked at the scared priest. “We must protect ourselves
and destroy her corpse!”

“We cannot do that here, my lord. We are a temple! Perhaps the House of Eternity …”

“Nay, fool! They will seek to preserve her. We cannot let that happen. Come. Now. We’ll offer her to the Nile.”

The priest slowly nodded agreement, his hand never leaving his amulet.

“Nay, wait,” User-Amun said. “Tonight. We’ll do it tonight.”

“So where does she stay?” the priest asked, frantically backing away from the corpse.

“I have the responsibility of the man, the woman is yours until tonight.”

“Why must we do this?” the priest whispered.

User-Amun paused in the doorway. “Her
ka
will not return to this body. Should a
khaibit
or
kheft
wish to, however, they could bring
ukhedu
life to her.”

The priest blanched.
Ukhedu
was vile poison. It filled a body when someone was sick. Medicaments and prayers fought the
ukhedu
for possession of the body. It was the basis of evil in the human condition. It brought madness, destruction, uneasy death.
A body under the control of the
ukhedu
would upset the balance of Ma’at, the equilibrium of the universe.

Once on the other side of the door, the sem-priest barred it. With trembling fingers he set his seal in the wax, forbidding
entry. Two
w’rer
-priests were assigned to help User-Amun with the man’s body. Together they began to make their way to the House of Eternity.

“My lord! My lord!”

User paused. They had just left the mud-brick
tenemos
walls of the temple, carrying the wrapped body of the victim between two shavenheaded priests. A
w’eb
-priest ran up. Cow dung and mud covered his feet and hands, and he quickly crossed his chest in respect.

“Aye?” User growled.

“I found this, my lord. It was lying underneath the man, between him and the woman.” The boy held out his hand, and User reluctantly
received the muddy thing. With a production of disdain he wiped it off and stared.

A ring. White and yellow gold were interwoven, and inside each loop was a chip of amber, or citrine. “It is too small for
a man,” User said. The priest shrugged, crossed his chest again, and ran back to the temple.

Thoughtfully User tucked the ring into his sash and bade the priests walk on.

Noph was a changed city with the famine. Though it was nearly the Season of Growing, none of the
rekkit
could get to their farms. The Nile had overflowed again and water stood in the fields, making it impossible to sow seed.
Earlier in the year, rats had invaded the city. All the sleek cats working every decan Ra gave them could not eradicate the
vermin. Dozens of people had died; dozens more lay ill.