24 Bones

By Michael F. Stewart

©2013
Michael F. Stewart

Cover Art by
Martin Stiff

Egyptian hieroglyphs by Manfred Klein

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form.

www.michaelfstewart.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Formatting by
Streetlight Graphics

Some Nice Words

“Terrific!
A successful blend of genres, complex and fascinating characters, and loads of suspense make 24 Bones a must-read.”
Nate Kenyon,
bestselling author of
The Reach, Prime, Bloodstone, and The Bone Factory.

“‘24 Bones’ is a winning debut.
It’s well-written and well-plotted, studded with drama, action, history and mythology. There’s even a little romance. The conclusion is thrilling with the final outcome of the battle between good and evil held over until the very end...leaving you guessing until that very last page.”
SF Crowsnest.

24 BONES

Prologue

Twenty-five years ago—Coptic Cairo, Egypt

Eight-year-old Dawid Nidaal was about to be branded.

“T
ake off your shirt, boy.”

A fire burned in the center of the courtyard of the Convent of St. George. Embers popped and fizzled as a man in a brown robe twirled a metal rod, its tip buried in the orange heat. He pumped a bellows with his foot, and the coals flared and darkened. A dusky-faced boy sat on a nearby step. His eyes lit with anxiety at each thrust of the man’s leg. A red glow crept up the shaft of the branding iron.

“Dawid!” The man’s focus remained on the fire. “I said, take off your shirt.”

Dawid sat frozen.

The iron clanged on cobblestone, its tip protruding from the fire. Pearl-white flecks sparked where wood clung to its starred design. The man strode to the boy, wrenched his arms up, and tore the shirt over his head. Tears streamed down Dawid’s cheeks. He writhed, but the man’s grip was too strong to break.

Sisters looked down from the convent windows, their veils obscuring any expression.

He dragged the boy to the center of the courtyard where the brand laid. The man’s chant was clipped, and the iron yellowed as it cooled.

“Dawid is one of your sons, born of Geb, of Earth.” As the man sifted dust over Dawid’s bare neck, the words rumbled against the walls. Ancient rock and ancient gods bore witness. “Dawid anoints himself with that which you anoint yourselves.” Water dribbled from a wineskin onto Dawid’s shoulder. “He lives on that on which you live …” The boy drew breath in short pants.

The man snatched the brand, and the walls of the Babylon Fortress garbled the chant. Dawid twisted with new urgency. This was a baptism by the four natural elements. Only the final element remained.

Directly
south of the Coptic fortress, neighboring Muslims eavesdropped from cracked concrete apartments. The kilns of potters, baking urns, and polychrome plates shouldered the eastern fortifications, and the forges of the tinkers lined the western battlements, their workshops ever ready to repair an unending stream of tools and wagon axles. To the north, within a vast necropolis of shadowy tombs, lay the dead.

Firelight flickered against the sandstone walls of the enclave of Coptic Cairo, a bright star in the dark. The light from the fire fell short of the domed Church of St. George and the Hanging Church’s towers—the bosom of Coptic power. Narrow, cobbled alleys connected the Hanging Church to the church of St. Barbara and, finally, to that of Abu Serga. There in Abu Serga, where Jesus had sheltered, pigeons cooed in the branches of the courtyard’s gnarled sycamore. Lamplight wavered in the window of a nearby apartment.

Leaning against the sycamore, Tara smelled the jasmine in her daughter’s black hair. She listened to the muted chanting and continued to trace the network of veins that ran up her daughter’s neck and cheek.

“Mommy?” Samiya twisted in Tara’s lap. “Why was I chosen?” It was not the first time she had asked, but both understood it would be the last.

“You know, daughter.” Observing Samiya’s pleading stare, Tara sighed. “In the beginning, the god Re, god of the sun, rose from the Benben stone, surrounded by the primordial waters of Nu.” Samiya smiled, and snuggled into her mother’s breast. “Upon the stone rested the Temple of the Phoenix, where every five hundred years the phoenix must return for rebirth. You will see that phoenix, Samiya.”

“And you, too,” Samiya said.

Tara looked away. “Perhaps,” she murmured before continuing. “At the temple, Re spat out eight gods to form the Ennead and then took human form as the first pharaoh. Re ruled well, but in time, he aged—man thought Re enfeebled and disobeyed his law. And so, Re sent destruction upon man in the form of his daughter, Sekhmet. The fiercest of all goddesses, she took the shape of a lion. She delighted in slaughter and bloodshed and killed all who had disobeyed her father.”

“Why would Re hurt us?” Samiya asked.

“Everything has a balance, Samiya. Sekhmet is merely an extension of Re, the evil which keeps him pure.” Her mother’s smile thinned even as she brushed out her daughter’s long tresses and continued. “But when Re looked down upon Sekhmet and over the land and saw the vengeance she had meted, he did not rejoice. Despite his command to stop, she persisted in slaying the people.”

Samiya peered into the courtyard shadows as if Sekhmet might still be skulking.

“Re summoned his men and brewed seven thousand jars of beer.” Samiya’s eyes glistened. “Then they brought red ochre to the temple and combined it with the beer until a scarlet pool formed. The next day, Sekhmet lapped at the pool, thinking it blood. She drank the sleeping draught and never killed another man. This is a story of good, evil, and their balance.”

With her lips pursed, Samiya searched her mother’s sharp green eyes.

“Without evil there can be no good, Samiya,” Tara said. “You are a counterbalance, a chaos without which there is no order.”

“But I’ll do bad things,” Samiya said.

“Was Sekhmet bad? No.” Her mother’s eyes hardened. “She fulfilled her destiny, as you must. Her fault was in not understanding the need for balance. Your only honor to me is to consider the balance in your actions.”

“Okay, Mommy.” Samiya’s voice lowered. “And that means I have to leave?”

Tara’s eyes watered as she swallowed. “Soon,” she whispered. “Say your goodbyes to Tariq.”

Samiya fought tears and hauled herself from the comfort of her mother’s lap. She ducked under a drooping clothesline and pulled open the apartment door. In the foyer, Tariq stood on a chair and stared at a light socket. He grinned when he noticed her.

“Want to see?” he signed, his fingers deftly plucking words from the air. She nodded. “You are sad.” Samiya looked down. Tariq crouched where he stood on the seat of the chair and lifted her chin with a finger. Her lip quivered when she met his hazel eyes. “I am sad, too,” he gestured. “But there is something important I want to explain.”

A tear tracked down her cheek.

“Think of the entire world as needing three wires.” Tariq straightened and pointed at the colorful jumble within the steel box of the light fixture. “This wire is the Fullness.” A red wire rolled between his slender fingers. “This is the Void.” Now he fingered a black wire. “And this is the ground wire.” The third wire was a naked copper snake.

“What is it for?” Samiya asked, looking at the metal thread.

Tariq’s normally jocular face was serious. “That is your special wire, Sam. Before you touch the Void, always ground this wire. It will keep you safe, and we will not lose you. Understand?”

Samiya nodded. “What about the red wire, the Fullness?”

“No.” Tariq’s fingers slashed. “Yours is the Void—the ground wire and the Void. Do not be ashamed of representing evil.” He stared at her for a long time. Her face crumpled in fear and confusion. “Promise?” Tariq’s lopsided grin sprouted, and he ruffled Samiya’s hair, but she could not right her downturned mouth.

She choked on a thick sob. “The ground wire and the Void,” she signed.

“Good girl.” Tariq’s laugh sounded surreal, perpetually bracketed as it was by silence. “Now stop talking, I need both hands, you know.”

Samiya returned to the courtyard, where tears coursed down her mother’s cheeks. Samiya’s sadness welled, and she tucked her chin to her chest as she shuffled out of the twin iron-studded doors. Once in the alley, she leaned against the wall and wept. A rat regarded her with yellow eyes as it gnawed a chicken bone in the street’s open sewer. She sidled past the rat and stumbled with bleary vision to a junction.

A glow spilled from a crack in the convent’s gate. This would be her last night as a sun-dweller and the moon failed to quench her thirst for light. A waft of wood smoke briefly overwhelmed the sewer’s rot. She ran the sleeve of her tunic across her face and crept to the door.

Sisters leaned from the windows of St. George’s convent, veils twisting in the breeze. Below their perches a bonfire burned, lighting a boy’s pallid face and the figure of a hooded man. Samiya shrank from the sisters’ gaze.

“I don’t want to be Shemsu Hor,” the boy screamed.

At the mention of the Shemsu Hor, hope surged in Samiya. The Shemsu Hor touched the Fullness, not Void; Companions of Horus, Re’s son, lived in light, not darkness.

Samiya stepped through the gate, feeling the heat from the fire. “I will, sir. I would be a companion,” she blurted.

From under the hood, the man’s gaze rested upon her. Then he lifted the brand. The boy struggled. The man’s jaw set, shaking his head, and then returned to his work. He recited the final words.

“May you, Horus, give Dawid those possessions which your father, Re, gave you.”

The brand came down. Dawid’s back arched, and he threw a shoulder forward. He screamed. The man removed the iron and Dawid slunk, whimpering, into the deep shadow of the courtyard wall beneath a shrine to Saint George.

The companion pursued. Dawid gripped his shoulder where the brand had seared. The man removed the boy’s hand, prying, gently now.

But upon seeing the mark, the companion groaned and knelt. Sorrow etched his face.

Samiya retreated into darkness. All alleys and choices led further into shadow. Through her tear-blurred sight, she did not see her mother, and they collided. Samiya fell, crying out, splayed on her back in the sewer muck.

Tara stood over her, chiseled from marble in the moon’s glow.

“Samiya, follow me.” She did not bend to lift her daughter to her feet. No one would bend for Samiya in the days ahead.

“But … my things.” Samiya protested.

“Bring nothing.”

Samiya had packed her dolls, a favorite dress—certainly she could not go in her tunic and shorts, now dirtied with sludge. The corners of her mouth curved down, and her eyes narrowed to slits. All she had was Tariq’s wire.

“Follow,” Tara repeated and walked slowly down the alley, leading Samiya past the convent’s gate, now shut.

Samiya trailed behind. Once under the door that led into the streets of Cairo, she groped for her mother’s hand.

The brown
-robed companion stood with his shoulders sloped before the Mother of the Sisters of Isis. She smiled, face plump and wrinkled like an old grape. Layers of shadow deepened the chamber. At her back, scorpions skittered in a parched aquarium.

“Did you really believe you could burn away Dawid’s destiny?” she asked.

“You drove me to this, Sister.” His robes fluttered as he shook. Lingering wood smoke infused the air.

“
Mother
now.” She chuckled. “What do I care, Companion? What if the prophet does not return?”

“Void will reign, and the earth will suffer five hundred years of chaos. The balance must—”

“Balance.” She spat. “The Sisters of Isis do not share in the balance.”

“You are keepers of the tablet—”

She laughed. “And we would trade you the contents of the tablet if you would connect us with the power of the Fullness.”

He snorted, but her gaze held his. “You would not …”

“The Shemsu Hor leave us with little choice. You draw strength from the Fullness. We would trade knowledge for that right.”

“But it is your duty to bring the Tablet of Destiny at the appointed time,” he said.

She lifted a bony finger. “That duty was agreed to by a sisterhood stripped of its strength. A duty forced upon them by the brotherhood twenty-five hundred years ago. Our hands are barren of power.” She showed her empty, veined palms. “You and the Shemsu Seth—”

“Seth,” he gasped. “Witch, you make this offer to the Shemsu Seth? They are animals of the Void.” He strode to within inches of her face, fists clenched.

“As you say, we must have balance.”

“Then we refuse. The Shemsu Hor refuse.” He pulled his cowl tight to his face as if to create a barrier between them; on the fabric, a gold embroidered spine ran from the edge of the hood to the bottom fringe.