Queen of Ashes (11 page)

“Can they get in?” Wazba asks, drawing his sword.

“If there are enough of them,” Brehan says. “They feel no pain. I imagine they will run into that door again and again until their bones poke through their skin and still keep coming.”

He gestures to a door in the center of the rear wall. “What's through that door?”

“That's where they embalm the dead,” Laila says. “There are different rooms...”

An ax handle crashes through the front door, is yanked out and crashes through again.

“Is this it?” Amosis asks, ashen-faced yet brave. “Are we all going to die here, then? Should we make our peace with the gods?”

Brehan turns and stops before the shelves of
ushabtis
. “I have an idea,” he says slowly. “It just might work.”

“What is it?” Laila asks, eying the rattling door.

“
Ushabtis
are made of minerals, salt and clay from the earth,” he says, picking one off a shelf. It's mummy-shaped and about the length of a human head with hieroglyphs all over except for the face.

“I am Brehan of the earth. I can animate them with...” He rips off the attached scroll and opens it. “With the words from the
Book of the Dead
to turn
ushabtis
into servants. Don't you see? I can make immortal guards to protect you!”

“Do it!” Laila says as the furniture in front of the door jolts and a chair rolls off the heap. “Do it now!”

He hesitates. “It's just...” Another pounding on the door sends a small table flying to the floor with a crash as an ax bursts through another spot in the door.

“Just what?” Laila practically shrieks.

“For the
ushabtis
to have any real intelligence, for them to really be able to protect you, we need a human soul to put in them.”

“One human soul...for all of them?” Laila asks.

“Just one. They will operate like the many legs of a scorpion, all ruled by a single mind.”

“Take my soul,” Laila says quickly, her voice shaking. “Use me to protect my people from this destruction.”

“No.” Wazba steps forward. “Use mine. I will gladly sacrifice my life to save the princess.” He turns toward her. “My only regret is that I was unable to save your mother. Maybe, with this sacrifice, you will forgive me.”

Laila throws her arms around him. “You kept us safe in that horrible place until...until the day you couldn't. I never blamed you, Wazba. Never for a moment. You cannot sacrifice yourself in this way.”

“If I do not, I will die protecting you and you will also die. At least this way my death will have some purpose. If death it is, for I think I will not really die, but live inside the
ushabtis
. Is that not so, Lord Brehan?”

Brehan nods. “With Wazba's military skills,” he says, stroking Laila's head, “it is the perfect solution. These
ushabtis
will be invincible.”

Wazba smiles sadly. “And so you see, my lady, you give me the gift of immortality.”

“Quickly! We must begin!” Brehan says. The door pops open a handbreadth until Amosis pushes the sofa back against it and stays there, leaning on it. “Wazba, stand over here. Laila, Sada, take the
ushabtis
and place them around him. Quickly!”

Laila sets to work efficiently, gathering armfuls of the figurines and setting them out in neat circles, but Sada works more slowly, sobbing uncontrollably. When everything is in place, Brehan unrolls the scroll and starts to chant the verses that give life to the
ushabtis
and command them to obey:

“Ushabti ipun, ir ipataw In-ra-irat.”

Laila sees a fiery glow radiating from Brehan's palms and spreading over Wazba and the statues. The general groans and sways. Laila puts a hand over her mouth; she wants nothing more than to rush into the circle of
ushabtis
, drag him out and protect him from harm, as he has always done for her.

“Ka-at nebit, irrat im-um Xe-rut-neter
.
”

Wazba throws back his head, opens his mouth and screams. At his feet, the statues tremble. Brehan looks pleased. The ritual must be going as he hoped. But Laila can hardly bear it. Brehan is killing Wazba. She covers her ears as tears run down her cheeks.

“Ast Haw-anuf Shadbawa im Rasara Xe-rut uf
.
”

A silver mist emanates from Wazba, who writhes in anguish, and floats over the shaking, rattling
ushabtis
filled with Brehan's fiery light. The general stands on his tiptoes, convulsing like a jerking puppet, his scream now more like an animal's whimper.

“Ipataw rakur nawnib iratuw imuf
.
”
Wazba drops to his knees, his large dark eyes rolling up into his head, revealing only the whites. Then he keels sideways, falling heavily.

“No,” Laila whispers. “No.”

The silver mist engulfs him and the statuettes. The orange light from Brehan's palms abruptly disappears, and he lowers his arms, shaking with fatigue.

“
Imuk metesh
? Will you obey?” he asks in a loud, commanding voice.

In the silver mist, Laila sees countless large dark forms. As the mist clears, there are dozens of Wazbas, armed with swords and shields, standing even taller than the general did. And across every bit of their skins except for the neck and face are carved the hieroglyphs from the
Book of the Dead
.

“
Iryi imuk!
We will obey!” they cry, slamming their chests with their right fists and then extending the fists in one mechanical motion.

Laila goes toward them, looking in their eyes to find her dear friend. She cups the cheek of one, touches the bicep of another as they look straight ahead. Their skin is as cool and smooth as glazed clay. She studies their faces. They are all Wazba, and yet not Wazba. Each one is a tiny bit different in face or height or girth, probably because the statuettes were all a tiny bit different. They part to let her pass through their ranks. In the center stands the tallest soldier of all, Wazba in every way, next to the fallen body of Wazba.

“Is it you?” Laila asks, her voice catching somewhere between joy and horror.

He smiles, baring straight white teeth. “I am here to serve and obey, my lady,” he says, “as I have always been since the day I met you.” He turns to the other soldiers. “Stand guard here with me!” he says, drawing his sword and facing the front door, which now has two gaping holes in it. “They shall not pass!”

“Come, we don't want to be in the middle of their battle,” Brehan says, opening the door to the room behind.

Sada, too weak from grief to move, has nearly collapsed in the arms of Amosis. As he pulls her toward the door, she struggles and says, pointing at Sarina's body. “We can't...leave her here. We must do the proper rituals for resurrection...mummification...a tomb... We must...”

“All right,” Brehan says. He gently picks up the dead girl as easily as if she were a doll and leads the little group into the next room, the
ibu
, the place of purification where bodies are washed as soon as they come in. Laila passes several naked bodies floating serenely in stone tanks filled with white wine. Lurid purple bruises streak their bodies, the settling of blood no longer pumping through veins.

A crash from the front room causes them all to jump. The quarry workers have managed to enter. Laila hears men yelling and the clash of arms.

“Keep going,” Brehan says.

The moment he opens the door to the next room, the stench hits Laila in the nose with the force of a vicious punch. She wants to retch. “Cover your...noses,” she whispers to the others. “This is the
wabet
.” The place of dissection.

Laila passes bodies lying stiffly on the tables, each expertly sliced open from throat to crotch. The glow of their lamps reveals palm wine and spices filling the body cavities. Beside each table, the organs—lungs, stomach, liver and intestines—lie in bowls of white natron salt to dry them out. A fourth body, a woman, lies on her belly with her face pressed against a hole in a table, her liquefied brain draining through a straw in her nose into a bucket below.

Other bodies are coated white with natron. On the tables around the sides, Laila sees tools glinting in the lamplight: countless hooks and knives of every size, long spoons and large shears, ladles and spatulas and copper pots.

Brehan looks around in wonder. “It is like a cannibal's kitchen of horrors,” he says. “There is one more room back there.” He opens a small door, and Laila knows they are in the
per nefer
, the place of eternal beautification, where mummies are sewn shut, adorned with wigs and makeup and wrapped. They pass several bodies tightly bound in white bandages, their arms crossed over their chests. Worktables are filled with enormous rolls of white linen bandages, clay jars of liquid resin used to glue the bandages together and heaps of paint brushes to apply the resin. More knives and giant needles litter the tables.

Beside each mummy is a set of four canopic jars, cylindrical clay vessels with painted wooden animal heads as their lids, which contain the organs. Though not as noxious as the last room, the smell of decay and chemicals in this one settles on her skin like a foul perfume.

“Are we safe in here?” she asks. “Because,” she laughs awkwardly, “I have never felt less safe in my life. Not even in the brothel.”

Brehan shuts his eyes and stands perfectly still. “I feel he's close,” he says, laying Sarina down gently against the wall. She slumps to the floor. He goes to the rear door of the building, raising the huge crossbar, seems satisfied with its heft and sets it back into its brackets. He checks the bars on the windows and nods in approval.

A sigh whistles through the room, causing all the oil lamps to sputter and almost go out. Laila looks around, perplexed. Where could that wind...

“He's here!” Brehan says.

“But...how?” Laila protests, looking around. “The
ushabtis
are guarding the first room. And he's not in here.”

Brehan shakes his head. “He doesn't need to be.”

Laila hears something coming from the other room. Not the firm footfall of an
ushabti
warrior, or the lurching gait of a crazed quarryman, but a sound far more sinister. A quiet footstep, with water dripping.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Brehan and Amosis slide their swords out of their scabbards with a slow scraping sound and advance silently. The door creaks open, revealing an old man and a young woman in the doorway. Naked. Dripping wet. With vacant eyes and purple bruises, their bald heads glowing greenish white in the lamplight. Behind them are others.

Amosis and Brehan nod at each other and advance on the corpses, who march forward jerkily. Amosis runs his sword through the girl as Brehan's slices through the old man, but it doesn't stop them. Still they come. Sada screams. Laila stands in frozen silence. She should run. She should try to find somewhere to hide. But she can't move.

“The heads!” Brehan calls to Amosis. “Cut off the heads!”

Two swords arc through the air. Two heads hit the floor and roll. Still the bodies advance, but now they stumble blindly around, bumping into tables.

Three more figures enter the room, these even more horrifying. It's the corpses from the dissection room, their torsos yawning open, wine and spices spilling out from the great cavities where their organs used to be. Two male cadavers, one young and the other old, head straight for Laila, who is still unable to move. Brehan springs in front of her, first slicing off the four outstretched arms, then sending the heads flying.

Sada leans against a table, whimpering, as another male corpse from the
wabet
lurches toward her and closes cold hands around her neck. Amosis leaps onto the corpse's back, trying to pull it away, but the force inside the thing is too strong. Sada falls to the floor, her eyes fluttering. Brehan, still guarding Laila, moves to help, but in one deft movement, Amosis slices off the corpse's head. When the fingers do not release their deathly grip, Amosis, careful not to harm Sada, saws off the left arm at the elbow, but the right one still squeezes the life out of the girl. With another slice, the right arms falls to the floor. Sada gasps, sucking in air as Amosis helps her up. The headless corpse lurches around, arm stumps outstretched, and bumps against a wall.

As if in a nightmare, by the flickering lamplight Laila sees four mummies sit up, straining at their wrappings, bursting the linen covering the crossed arms. Bandaged fingers rip off the rigid' dried strips covering the face, revealing dead eyes. They move their stiff legs off the table and slide down, arms reaching for Laila. She backs away slowly, a scream caught in her throat.

“Amosis!” Brehan cries. The two men advance on the reanimated corpses, slicing off heads and arms. Now all the headless, armless corpses form a circle around them.

“The legs,” Amosis says to Brehan.

They lash out at the legs, swords slicing neatly through desiccated flesh as one by one the grotesque bodies topple over. Now they lie on the floor in several pieces, all of them twitching.

“Is that it?” Laila asks, leaning against a table and gasping for breath. “Is it over?”

“No,” Brehan says, readjusting his arm in the leather grip inside the shield. “I have a feeling that was the only the beginning.”

As if in response, Sarina rises from the floor and looks at them blankly.

Sada, pressed against a wall holding her bruised throat, stands shakily and says, grinning, “Look! We were wrong. Sarina isn't dead. She was only unconscious!” She bolts forward, but Brehan holds her back.

“No, Sada, it isn't her. It's only her body reanimated by Riel, just like the mummies.”

“No! You're wrong! She's—”

Sarina walks jerkily toward the rear door. Amosis raises his sword as she passes but doesn't bring it down. Laila sees his face twisted in uncertainty. Brehan thrusts Sada behind him, steps toward her dead twin and raises his sword. “No!” Sada cries, jumping in front of him. She throws her arms tightly around Sarina. “Tell them you're not dead,” she begs.