Servant of the Gods (15 page)

In his place, doing what Saini himself should be doing. It was he who should be at Banafrit’s right hand, not that girl! A foreigner! An ex-slave and foreigner, whom Banafrit would make High Priestess over himself as High Priest.

Kamenwati sat up, suddenly alert and furious. “She’s gone where? What priests and priestesses?”

Saini quailed at the abrupt and intense attention. The countenance of the Grand Vizier was a severe one, dark and grim. The flash of fear that went through him as those black eyes focused on him shocked him. For the first time, Saini questioned the wisdom of his actions, the words he’d spoken so thoughtlessly, even as he realized he couldn’t take them back. He was committed to this path.

 “All of them, my lord Vizier, the priests and priestesses of all the major Gods, and many of the lesser,” Saini stammered, his knees quaking. “Ra, Isis and Osiris, Horus, Hathor, even Sekhmet, all of them.”

Banafrit. This was her doing. Kamenwati’s jaw tightened. They conspired against him, all of them.

Fury burned in him.

All of the major Gods and Goddesses. All, that is, but one.

He, the High Priest of Set, hadn’t been invited. Not that they knew he served that God. Even so, one day they would regret that omission. Someday they would all bow before him as High Priest and King of all Egypt. It had been promised to him.

“The one called Irisi goes south? To what purpose?”

Although of course he knew, but he wanted the little priest to confirm it.

“To seek the source of this darkness,” Saini said. “To determine what the army faces. They speak of a prophecy…”

Prophecy.

That lone word was like a bolt of lightning through Kamenwati. He sat up sharply.

“What prophecy?” he snapped, leaning forward on the arm of his chair.

Saini quailed beneath the intensity of that black glare. It seemed something alien and inhuman moved behind those dark eyes, a glow like coals in a fire, as if something burned within them. Within him.

“I don’t know,” Saini said, his voice a croak. Suddenly he found he regretted what he’d said and done. “I’ve only heard whispers, rumors, something about a darkness rising over Egypt…”

Kamenwati sat back.

A prophecy…one the priests and priestesses of the other Gods clearly felt was imminent. One they’d kept from him, the Grand Vizier. High Priest of Set.

Well.

A darkness rising…

Oh, there was a darkness rising indeed.

“A prophecy,” Kamenwati said, reaching out toward the little man before him as he summoned the Djinn within him. He gestured “I would know more.”

Kamenwati smiled and Saini went cold at the sight of it.

To Saini’s shock, words poured out of him like a leak in a broken pitcher. Everything he thought, everything he’d overheard. It was as if he were wrung like a rag.

A darkness rising to devour all of Egypt. Kamenwati felt something inside him shiver in anticipation, a coldness he reveled in rising within him and a heat that burned to match it.

He considered what he’d learned.

Well, his once slave might just find the source of that darkness…

As for Banafrit and the others? There might be surprises for them as well. There was a lesson to be learned for all of them. Kamenwati would teach it to them.

If Kamenwati could gain control of the army, even Narmer would be hard pressed to stop him. Only Akhom stood between Kamenwati and control of the armies. If Akhom fell…

Few knew Baraka was his man, body and soul. In truth, not even Baraka knew how deeply Kamenwati had set his hooks there.

His time had come at last. The darkness was rising. They were coming.

The first light of morning was just touching the sky as Khai and his men went to harness their horses only to find the Lady Irisi already mounted and waiting, her guards yawning at the earliness of the hour. Wide-awake and aware, the Lady looked far more ready for battle than General Akhom would have expected if he had seen her, but he was still abed. She was dressed in a soft, worn, undyed linen shift. Her swords were in their sheaths on her back, the leather straps of the harness crisscrossed her torso at her breastbone. Her wavy, golden hair had been braided at both sides of her face to leave her vision clear while the rest was left free to flow over her back and shoulders like a river of sunlight.

This was the warrior Khai had seen that first day.

She’d surprised all of them, to judge by their expressions…all but Khai, who’d expected no less.

He looked at her and felt that stirring within him again. He’d slept restlessly, memories of her tormenting him. Now he was aware of her in a way he hadn’t been before.

Even dressed for battle, she was beautiful.

“First light, my lord Khai?” she said, looking up at the sky, a perfectly arched brow lifting as her mouth twitched teasingly. “You’re late.”

His men smothered chuckles.

“Lady,” Khai said with respect, amused, and inclined his head in greeting.

Her eyes lit with laughter as she returned the gesture graciously.

A few of his men now laughed softly in consideration for the sleepers, appreciatively and openly.

“We’ll be riding hard,” Khai warned.

Irisi nodded her understanding and gestured. “After you?”

In the early morning light, to her he was as darkly handsome as ever. As she was, he was dressed for battle, wearing only a linen kilt belted in place and little else, leaving his muscled chest exposed. Against the pale material his burnished bronze skin and thick wavy hair was all the more striking. The sight of him caught at her heart in a way she’d never experienced, making it both lighten and ache at the same time.

The first golden edge of the sun peeked over the desert. With a gesture, Khai sent his people out, his scouts racing ahead.

Irisi whistled lightly and what he’d taken in the dim morning light for a sandy mound or a discarded pile of blankets resolved itself into a young lion as the animal rose to its feet. With a rumble, it shook his shaggy head as Irisi held up her hand to Khai’s men to forestall them.

“Don’t,” she said, to the archers. “He’s mine. You may be grateful for him later.”

Her eyes turned to Khai.

Raising an eyebrow, Khai returned the look as he eyed the lion speculatively.

“Nebi,” she said.

Motioning with her hand, she bid the lion to sit. Which it did, obediently.

Khai remembered her request of the King.

Her cats. Lions
.

This then was one of them.

Lifting her chin, Irisi grinned at him in challenge, her eyes sparkling.

Giving the lion a look and then her, Khai shook his head in amusement, refusing to show any trepidation.

Irisi laughed, clearly delighted.

Normally Khai wouldn’t have ridden out with the scouts, but the loss of his patrol and the tales he’d heard from the refugees had been more than enough to alarm him. He wanted to see this for himself. Had to. So he would know what had happened to the men he’d sent there.

“We ride to the fort first,” Khai said, “to see if they’ve learned anything we haven’t.”

On any other day the ride would have been pleasant, even at the hard pace they set, were it not for the stream of refugees, mostly farmers, who fled east north east past them. They passed by villages where thin dogs barked. Eerily, in each, cats crouched on the western walls, their ears flattened as they stared outward.

The fields were empty; some of the people who lived there piled their belongings on rickety carts, while others reinforced their walls and doors.

A few called to Irisi, her robes marking her as a priestess of Isis, asking for her blessing.

She remembered too well what it was to lose everything. Bending in the saddle, she touched every hand that reached to her as they passed, knowing what it was they sacrificed.

Khai watched. He’d come from much the same background as the folk they passed.

Catching his look, she said, “Once I was like them, leaving behind everything I knew.”

All that had changed. She had a place now, a home in the temple. She hadn’t forgotten that.

It was late in the afternoon when they came within sight of the tall, thick walls of the fort, slowing to a canter as they approached.

An eerie silence prevailed, unbroken by the sound of the birds that normally scavenged the refuse and detritus of the fort’s dunghill. All that could be heard was the wind blowing over the sand, a soft ominous hiss.

Khai looked to the walls.

They were empty. The gates were open wide, almost in invitation. No one could be seen, within or without.

Something was badly wrong.

Instinctively, nervously, the archers around him strung their bows and carried them at the ready as the charioteers held their horses on a tight rein, the animals tossing their heads restlessly.

At Irisi’s side, the lion Nebi made an anxious noise low in his throat, shaking his mane uneasily as his tail twitched.

With a glance at him, her expression unsettled, Irisi reached behind her to loosen her swords in their scabbards.

The towers at each corner were unoccupied, as was the interior as far as they could see through the narrow aperture of the open gates. Nothing moved beyond them. The garrison should have been bustling with men drilling and patrols coming and going. Especially in light of the stories they’d heard.

Khai’s people looked around nervously as they rode through the gates in the outer wall.

No one challenged their right to enter. Shadows pooled unnaturally beneath the walls.

They passed through the first wall then through the second and into open marshalling yard.

To all appearances, the complex of barracks and buildings was completely empty. The square before them was barren, no soldiers drilled, no one repaired their gear or sharpened their swords, nor did the commandant come to greet them.

It was unnatural, eerie and disquieting. The entire garrison seemed to have vanished.

A silence unlike any other, broken only by the whistling of the wind, surrounded them.

“How many?” Irisi whispered.

“A hundred, perhaps more.”

The enormity of it… Khai shook his head in disbelief and dismay.

With gestures, Khai split his people and sent them scouting carefully through the complex.

He and Irisi dismounted to cautiously approach the commandant’s quarters.

They could see nothing within the shadows of the entry but those shadows seemed darker than usual.

Nebi pressed protectively close to Irisi. Out of habit, Irisi rested her hand on his head, her fingers in his mane.

Darkness seemed to press against her, although the sun was still high in the sky.

Something was wrong…

The closer they walked to the commander’s quarters the more disturbed she felt.

She tried to tell herself it was her imagination.

She sensed…something…

Malevolent… Evil… Gathering…

With a great coughing roar, Nebi suddenly crouched.

“Khai,” Irisi shouted and threw herself at him.

Nebi leaped just as something with wicked teeth and claws erupted from within the concealing darkness.

Whatever it was that burst from the cover of the commandant’s quarters was like nothing Irisi had ever seen before… And yet it was familiar in a strange way, something she’d only read about in the scrolls, something to haunt her nightmares.

Nebi met the thing, snarling and roaring.

More of the things bounded out in the wake of the first.

They looked like hyenas but they weren’t. Everything about them was slightly wrong, from their oversized teeth to the too-long claws on their feet, yet the powerful bone-crushing jaws of the hyena they resembled were still very much a danger.

Irisi spun away from Khai, throwing her swords up to defend herself as one of the things launched itself at her.

“Call your people back, Khai,” she cried. “Get them back.”

The thing twisted to evade the iron in the rough steel of her swords.

Khai shouted for his people as more of the things and new, different, ones erupted from the shadows where they’d been hiding.

Things that resembled smoke but weren’t flowed from the barracks around them in rolling billows. That smoke transformed into creatures shaped roughly like men. It was there that all resemblance ended.

Rough creatures, their skin was as black as charcoal and rimose, threaded with glints of red like the coals of a banked fire. Their eyes were narrow glowing slits, their noses and mouths a slash of embers. Others shifted shape and form, some appeared to be men who’d suffered a terrible battle – all bore fearsome wounds. Khai feared he knew who they were and from where they’d come…the fallen of the fort.

With a howl, a hyena-like thing leaped at Irisi. She spun away, her swords flashing. It screamed in frustrated fury as her blade cut it while another leaped at Khai.

Khai took the thing down with a two-handed swing of his own sword, sending it tumbling across the ground. It instantly rolled to its feet and raced toward them once more. A spear thrown by one of his men pierced it. It howled, rolling, scrabbling and biting at itself.

“Don’t let the shadows touch you,” Irisi cried out in warning, as she cut an ifrit in two.

If she was right about what these were
… Fear shot through her.

Gesturing, she called up a burst of wind to drive back the shadows closest to them and their people.

“What are they?” Khai demanded, turning to put Irisi at his back as his people raced to join them, most of them ducking, dodging and fighting the creatures that seemed to burst through or ooze from nearly every orifice of the fort.

He saw the smoke that wasn’t smoke swirl around one of his men.

Screaming, the man’s eyes bulged as he fell, his clothing stained red even as he toppled.

Irisi threw herself against Khai as he instinctively responded, going to the aid of his man.

“No,” she cried, “you can’t save him.”

More of the things appeared.

Nebi leaped past them to take another, his massive jaws locking on the throat of one of the hyena things.

“Djinn,” she answered as she looked around in horror. “They’re Dark Djinn…”

They came from everywhere.

Ifrit in the shape of hyena, and sila – fire demons. The ghul who would eat the dead or a man alive...and marid, beautiful spirits who stole men’s souls.

In all her reading Irisi had never heard of this. Djinn didn’t fight together. Djinn never fought together. They were solitary creatures. And yet here they were.

United…

They couldn’t fight so many, not with so small a force.

Dear Gods and Goddesses, help us!
she thought.

To Khai’s horror, his fallen man rose up to take sword against them.

“Form up,” Khai shouted to those that remained. They couldn’t win here, they could only die here.

Irisi vaulted into the saddle of her horse even as Khai leaped into his chariot and snapped the reins to set his own horses in motion. Not that they needed much encouragement, by the rolling of their eyes he could see they wanted to flee as badly as he did.

His men ran to do the same.

They looked at the gate and the creatures that ran to cut them off from their only escape.