The Isis Knot (47 page)

The falcon swooped down over the desert, trailing a carpet of billowing black. As it descended upon them, its celestial legs unfolded, releasing diamond-sharp talons. It opened its beak and released an ear-shattering shriek, then stabbed and sank one set of talons into Malik’s shoulder.

The falcon was no death dream. The animal was as corporeal as Malik, whose blood splattered onto Sera’s chest. He gurgled in anguish and surprise, but didn’t die.

Horus’s wings beat slow and steady, keeping the giant bird hovering above the bloody scene. The wind it created surged over Sera in an even tempo. She scrambled out from under Malik’s writhing body, wiping his blood from her face.

Above, Seth’s translucent body twitched, howling in rage. The bird shifted, raised its other leg, then sank that set of razor talons into the beast shadow, piercing him straight through. With a great back-swoop of its wings, the falcon rocked backward and yanked Malik and Seth off the ground. Malik was a rag doll, a limp, battered body being thrown about, his attempts at defense weak.

Seth, however, fought—and fought hard. His clawed arms struck Horus’s glittering beak again and again as the giant falcon swerved haphazardly about. They circled and swooped, their battling bodies bouncing off the towers of rock in the canyon.

Sera ducked flying debris and coughed through dust showers, but she never took her eyes away from the battle, alarm making her body heavy. She huddled close to the cave entrance, one hand placed protectively on her belly. She wondered if she should go inside and pray to Isis, but decided that would do no good—the goddess was inside her and nowhere else…and Seth’s sister would be utterly helpless in this fight.

Above, the combatants slammed into the arch above the cave entrance, crunching the apex and collapsing the small tunnel. Sera raced away from the avalanche, tripping over her skirt and falling forward onto her hands. The pain of a hundred scrapes on her palms was nothing compared to the tightness of her throat and the fear for the safety of her child.

As she looked up, she saw that the cave entrance was now filled in, Amonteh’s tiny Isis knot hidden.

The two gods plummeted to the ground, Seth pinned underneath, Malik’s useless arms barely swatting at the bird’s head. Seth writhed and wailed in Horus’s talons, but the falcon held on tightly, screeching wordless cries and beating at the air with his mighty wings.

Then Seth’s bloody arm wriggled free. His massive claw swiped at Horus’s face. Sera screamed in warning, telling her son to get away, but the blow struck true. With a great bellow, Seth’s fingers curled around the falcon’s left eye. The claws dug in and gouged the eye out.

The bird threw back its head and shrieked, and it seemed like the whole world shivered. A mother’s pain, the worst thing ever, ripped through her as she watched it happen. She lunged forward, heading back into the fray—to do what, she didn’t know, only that she had to do
something
.

Seth turned his hand and opened his palm, the smooth round eye dissolving in his grip. It turned into a shower of light and shot back up into the sky, where the moon absorbed it.

With a great pump of his wings, the falcon lurched up, taking himself airborne. Only he left Malik on the ground this time, and kept both sets of talons in Seth. With a great
riiiiiiiip
, Seth’s
ka
came free.

Malik’s body went completely limp, his head rolling to one side, his lifeless eyes open and unable to watch as the great falcon wheeled hard to the left. But Sera saw. She watched through wet eyes, her hands covering her mouth.

Free of its host body, Seth was now a faint, flaccid creature hanging from Horus’s talons. Useless. Powerless. Until his time came again.

Horus made huge, graceful circles as he soared higher and higher, back up into the black.

Triumphant screeches filled the sky, fading as the bird gained altitude. Until his shape and that of Seth’s merged back with the millions of other stars, and the sky was as it had been.

Her son was gone, but gone because of victory.

Sera would see him in person in another nine months.

CHAPTER 29

Spectacular orange and fuchsia rays backlit Elephantine Island, bathing its ancient nilometer and the ruins of the Temple of Khnum in natural magic. The waters of the Nile rippled like fire. Sera lounged in a chair on the balcony of her hotel suite, slowly stroking the subtle swell of her belly.

Three months, and she still couldn’t bring herself to leave Egypt.

Three months, and the hole created by William’s absence still hadn’t healed.

The night Horus had taken Seth back to the stars, she’d stayed by the buried cave, staring up at the sky until dawn. When the sun rose, she’d slid, numb, into the car that had once been driven by the man who’d died by her hand. Her prevailing thought had been to hop the first flight out of there. To head for home, curl up on her bed, and sleep until the baby came. She’d figure out the rest later.

But where was home, exactly? Not Seattle, with her crappy beige apartment and secretarial job and school books that no longer held any interest. Definitely not Las Vegas.

The thought of leaving Egypt, where everything had begun two thousand years ago, opened a chasm in her heart and made concrete shoes of her feet.

She’d considered going to Australia, but the Sydney that stood now was not the Sydney she knew. It would only remind her of what she had lost. Of what no longer existed.

So she decided to stay, at least for a little while. The money her father had left her was more than enough to stick around, and since no time had passed in the present day while she’d spent time in 1819, she hadn’t been considered missing or anything.

Not that anyone would miss her here anyway. The lone almost-friend at work didn’t really count.

For the thousandth time, her chest constricted and her nose tingled. She squeezed shut her eyes, willing the tears away. She’d gotten really good at that.

“Miss Wilhemina?” Nasir rapped softly on the glass balcony door before opening it slightly. She’d adopted the alias in the wake of Malik’s death. It kept her anonymous and gave her a part of William, even if only in name. “I have everything arranged for tomorrow. If you won’t be needing me the rest of the evening, I’ll go to my room.”

“Of course, Nasir. Thank you for today. I know I thank you every day, but I always mean it.”

“It is my pleasure. I will see you tomorrow at nine o’clock. A car will bring us down to the boat.
Leila Sa’eeda
. Good night.”

Though age drew deep lines across Nasir’s face and the corners of his eyes drooped dramatically, his hair was still full and richly black. He wore baggy clothes like most men in Egypt, but she could tell he was thin. He always smiled, so happy to share the history of his country with such an interested visitor. From Alexandria to Luxor and now, finally, to Aswan, he’d been not only her interpreter, but also a true companion and a bottomless container of knowledge.

Now she knew about countless other deities as well as her Isis and Osiris and Horus.

Tomorrow would be the culmination. Tomorrow she would visit Philae and the Temple of Isis.

As the hotel room door clicked behind Nasir, she settled deeper into her chair and cracked open a bottle of water. She felt full—of power, of child—but also empty and alone and without a home.

And she missed William constantly.

What had happened to him the moment after he’d sent her away? Had the soldiers taken him into custody, only to hang him later? Or had they killed him right then and there?

Now the restrained sob escaped, bubbling up despite her attempt to keep it in. Once it was out she couldn’t stop the rest, and she sat there, crying and heaving, until the sun disappeared and she was finally dry.

At last she leaned back and patted at her swollen eyes. She caressed the cuff through the thin linen of her long sleeve. Though Isis had remained silent these three months since Horus’s victory, Ramsesh was ever present. Every step Sera had taken inside ancient temples and over sacred grounds had elicited deep emotions of praise and homecoming.

Ramsesh yearned for Amonteh as strongly as Sera did for William, and it doubled her sense of hopelessness.

One amazing thing? William’s child had created equilibrium inside her. With Seth’s
ka
tucked safely among the stars, little Horus watched over the chaos still churning inside her, keeping it in check. She no longer felt unstable. If anger or frustration swooped in, she could easily control the bloodlust. When anxiety or sorrow flared, a strangely familiar male voice always came to her.
Easy, mother. I’ll love and watch over you as you will for me.

She would leave Egypt soon, she decided suddenly. After tomorrow, after Philae, she would return to the United States to have her baby. And she would raise him alone in a country that now felt alien, and work at a job she didn’t love just to make money to survive in a time that was empty of the one person she craved most.

Chill came with night in the desert, and she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. As she’d done every night since Malik’s death, she turned her face to the sky and found Sirius. Every night she asked Isis for word about William’s fate. If he’d suffered. If he watched over her now.

Every night she received no reply.

#

After breakfast the next morning, Nasir collected Sera at the main entrance of the hotel. As usual he was rather chatty about the city as their private car swerved around townspeople and animals and other cars. In this country there seemed to be no rules of the road. She’d grown used to and even a little fond of the craziness.

During a pause in a story about the construction of the Aswan high dam, he said, “You are quiet this morning, Miss Wilhemina. Are you not feeling well?” He glanced at her belly.

Though she didn’t look pregnant to the casual eye, she’d confided to him about her condition. “I’m fine.”

“Are you excited to see Philae?”

She glanced out the car window where children ran alongside the vehicle, waving and smiling and holding out their palms. She’d never really paid attention to children before, not because she hadn’t cared, just that they’d never been within her sphere of awareness. Now she searched every one’s face, looking for hints about the boy her son would be.

“More than you know,” she murmured.

On the boat that crossed the Nile to the island, Nasir asked, “Did you know this is not the original Philae?”

She gasped. “No. What do you mean?”

“The first Philae Island, the original, is now underwater because of the dams. To preserve the temples, the entire complex was moved, stone by stone, to Agilika Island.”

She tried to stamp down rising panic, her plan turning to ash in her mind. “Is it…the same?”

In Nasir’s enthusiastic manner, he illustrated his words with dramatic hand gestures. “Oh, yes, yes. It is exactly the same. Stone by stone.”

When she stepped off the boat on the south point of the island, she saw for herself that he spoke the truth. A part of her had been here before. Isis’s presence crackled in the air.

The long western colonnade stretched on her left, framing long windows of blue water. On her right stood the unfinished eastern colonnade. Directly ahead rose the great slanted pylons signifying the entrance to Isis’s temple.

When Ramsesh had lived, the columns had been whole and brightly painted. Starting with the Romans’ defacement, the structures now showed their age. Their colors gone. The sharp edges worn down.

Yet it was still the same and it was still stunning.

“Why do you not bring a camera?” Nasir asked. “All the Americans, they always have cameras. This whole trip, you have not taken one photo.”

She smiled and pointed to her heart. “It’s all here.” And then to her head. “And here.”

They meandered toward the first pylon, Nasir discussing the small Temple of Imhotep nearby. A large group of British tourists followed their guide toward Trajan’s Kiosk, a striking, fourteen-column square just to the east. The rolling sound of their accents made her heart pinch.

“Shall we start at the north end?” Nasir steepled his fingers. “The Roman quay and gate, perhaps?”

Sera waved him off, her eyes trained on the pylons. “I’d like to see the Temple of Isis first. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to go in alone. Will you join me inside in a few minutes?”

He looked perplexed, but nodded just the same. She didn’t think he’d have a problem standing there when she was paying him so handsomely with Mitchell Oliver’s money.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said with a smile.

She knew the way to Isis’s temple. As she walked through the first set of pylons, Ramsesh’s memories layered themselves over her own vision. She saw simultaneously the hushed nighttime scene in which the scared Egyptian woman had made her final
hetep
, and also the bright daylight as it struck the chipped hieroglyphics. All around her floated the sound of tourists’ conversations and laughter.

In both scenes, magic swirled everywhere.

Through the first pylon stood the birth house. From her days with Nasir she knew that a birth house was where rites for the god-kings were performed, and royal marriages and the kings’ births were recorded. The birth house on Philae was covered with images of Horus: as the falcon-headed god, proud and crowned as an adult, and also as a child being breastfed by Isis.