Servant of the Gods (36 page)

Irisi slipped her hands over his back, to run them along the long, strong muscles there, sliding them down to draw his hips closer, to pull him deeper into her.

Their eyes on each other, they rocked together with greater and greater intensity, the need for connection, for completion, filling them, becoming nearly desperate.

Pleasure rose slowly and sweetly, building within her as she felt him harden…

Khai felt Irisi tighten around him, saw her smile brighten as she felt him swell within her, and he thrust up, harder, deeper. She cried out softly and he felt the muscles within her close around him as ecstasy took her. Her body stroked him, pleasured him, and he followed her into bliss, emptying into her gloriously, pouring himself into her as he tightened his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

They fell asleep that way, joined together for one last time.

In the torch-lit pre-dawn hours of the night they came to prepare her, Djeserit standing with a cup in her hands.

“It’s time,” Awan said gently.

Irisi fixed in her mind the spells she would need to get through this.

“Drink,” Djeserit said, her voice thick with emotion, but soft all the same. Her eyes were dark with emotion. “All of it.”

Irisi took the cup and drained it to its dregs, the wine faintly bitter from the herbs laced through it. Those herbs would help ease her.

Keeping her mind focused, she chanted the words of the Book of Emerging into Daytime that she would need.

She settled into trance.

Cradling her in his arms, Khai held her as the drugs and herbs took effect. Then he stood, lifting his beloved Irisi in his arms.

He glanced warningly at the others. No one but he would take her on this final journey.

And so he did.

He laid her on the altar and stepped back, reluctantly, painfully.

Under Rensi’s supervision the priests and priestesses stripped her to bare skin.

It had been necessary to make changes to the standard rituals if this were to succeed.

As her closest friends Awan, Kahotep and Djeserit bathed her gently with warm, natron-enhanced water, their touch reverent and respectful, as they would for any other beloved friend they were preparing for the journey to the afterlife… For Irisi would begin that journey, she simply wouldn’t complete it…

They sang the spells that would preserve her.

Others chanted to the Gods, calling them, awakening them to the morning.

The familiar sound of the ritual greetings was soothing to all of them, including Irisi.

While they washed her, the warm water calming, Irisi closed her eyes and sank deeper into trance as she had a thousand times before in the temple, aided by the drugs and herbs in the wine Djeserit had given her. The words drifted over her as they painted her face and brushed out her hair so it spilled over the sides of the altar.

She felt Djeserit lift her head to pour more of the wine between her lips to ease her, but not enough to dull her wits or her will. These herbs were also more bitter, numbing her against the coming pain.

And pain there would be, she knew. There was no help for it.

More numbing salves were painted on her wrists, beneath her breastbone and down her belly.

Chanting steadily, so the sound of it was like the river washing against the shore, or the wind through the grasses, those attending spread a clean white linen sheet over her body and stepped away to give her and Khai a moment.

Khai had never seen Irisi as beautiful as she was at that moment, her lovely face serene and still, her kohl-rimmed eyes closed so that her eyelashes lay dark against her rose-blushed cheeks. Her fine lips had been darkened with color. Her glorious hair streamed down the sides of the altar like molten gold. Her strong slender hands had been folded neatly over her breast. Her swords were laid to each side of her.

His heart shattered.

Djeserit bowed to him, giving him leave this one last time to do as he would, as they had so seldom beneath Kamenwati’s threat.

Distantly below them, he heard that one’s furious cries of protest. On this day, throughout Egypt, all reference to his name would be erased as if he’d never been. And that was only right, Khai thought fiercely.

Now, though, now for him there was only Irisi.

The scent of Khai’s skin was another balm to Irisi’s spirit.

She opened her eyes to find him there, stroking her hair back from her face.

Irisi smiled softly.

She wouldn’t leave him with tears.

It was that smile that broke Khai’s heart, that finally, she would give him that at the end.

Khai clenched his fingers in her hair, and willed himself to be as strong for her as she was for him.

Slowly, he lowered his mouth to her warm lips…savored them…lingered there, if only for a moment.

His heart ached, grief burned in his chest…

Djeserit came, touched his hand reluctantly, tears glimmering in her eyes.

He wanted to protest, but he could not.

Compassion in her gaze, Djeserit held something in her hand, a small curl of gold – a single lock of Irisi’s hair.

Reaching up to the amulet at his throat, the one Irisi had wrought for him to keep him safe – successfully – Djeserit opened it and tucked the curl within it.

Khai’s throat tightened as he closed his hand around the little charm. It had saved his life more than once.

With a nod to Rensi, High Priest of Anubis, and to Awan, High Priest of Osiris, Djeserit stepped away and Khai went with her.

Djeserit’s part here for the moment was done. She was needed below to aid Kahotep. Kamenwati fought them fiercely. Equally fiercely, she vowed he would not win.

With a blessing kiss to her beloved friend’s forehead, she turned, resolute, to face the Darkness below.

The warmth of Khai’s lips was gone.

Irisi felt the press of Djeserit’s on her forehead, and then she, too, was gone.

It began.

Awan’s hands were as gentle on her as possible.

She felt the sharp sting of the knife nick her skin at her wrists and ankles. Reeds slipped inside her veins to allow the natron- and herb-laced water inside her as well as the blood to flow freely out. In her mind the spells she needed seemed to appear, she could almost see them as they were written. She chanted as well, silently, in counterpoint to that of those around her.

Below in the cold torch-lit darkness, Saini squared his narrow shoulders and entered the lower chamber, the Horn of the Djinn in hand.

The echoing expanse was empty, the huge gold and silver encrusted doors wide.

He was alone.

“It’s time,” Awan, High Priest of Osiris said.

His voice echoed.

Saini blew.

The sound of the Horn a saw-toothed wail in the darkness.

In the chamber above, some gasped.

They turned, to watch in horror.

Darkness flowed like a river, a great and terrible shadow that streamed through the entrance down into the dark places below them like a shadowed waterfall.

It seemed to go on forever.

Awan, Kahotep and the others shook themselves.

It began…

Irisi felt a sharp pain below her breastbone, dulled somewhat by the herbs and drugs, and then the invasion of her body. There was a fullness inside her, invading her chest... She couldn’t breathe, it was too much, too big…

Desperately, she fought for focus even as she knew what it was they did.

She concentrated on the chants, on the spells she needed as something moved within her.

Her breath grew short…

Awan and Rensi worked as quickly as they might, she knew.

The pain was sharp…

Djeserit returned as they took it from Irisi’s breast. She was the only one fast enough and with enough magic to take it where it needed to be as the Horn blew its eerie wail, summoning the Djinn.

Forms moved in the dark flood, ghul, ifrit, all of them. The marid went eagerly, their eyes avid.

In the chamber below the great iron doors closed with a final thud.

Djeserit set the seal in place, the final piece in an intricate puzzle that would secure the doors, lock them, and what was behind it, forever. Then she rejoined the others, brushing Khai’s shoulder with her hand as she passed in sympathy and shared grief.

Irisi felt the moment they took her living heart, still beating, from her breast. Magic flared… She knew it would go quickly now…

They lifted her, her life and spirit suspended, and tipped her upward. She slid, gently, into warm fluid.

Stillness, as darkness closed around her and her body floated in the Water of Life.

Her body twitched, its last efforts giving way as Irisi surrendered herself to the will of the Gods.

She gasped, but there was only more natron and herb-laced water to breathe.

Her body fought. There was nothing else to do as the drug, herb and natron-enhanced fluid filled her lungs, the hollow in her chest, and more…

But she wasn’t completely alone.

Isis held her hands in comfort against the pain, as did Osiris. Each of the Gods came to her to give her their gifts. Irisi’s body twitched with each invasion, her struggles weakened… Irisi herself welcomed them.

Those outside were running out of time. If they weren’t done before her body began to die...

Isis bent her will to hold back death, Osiris at her side as well, keeping the door of spirit open. Horus came, his touch loving and gentle, to give Irisi vision, clear Sight. The sense of her friend Kahotep gave Irisi comfort. Thoth came to give her knowledge, and gentle Hathor, to let her dream of the world beyond the stone to keep her mind from losing its way. Anubis came also, of course, the God of mummification, to help preserve what lay within the stele.

Last of all came the Goddess Sekhmet. Hers was the final gift. The one she’d denied Irisi at the beginning.

Her lambent eyes glowed within the depths of the stele.

“That you might live forever,” she said.

Sekhmet laid her warm lips on Irisi’s throat to give her the Goddess’s kiss and with it the gift of everlasting life.

Irisi’s skin parted beneath the Goddess Sekhmet’s teeth with a gentle pop.

The Goddess fed, deeply, drawing the last precious drops of Irisi’s life-blood from her, so the herbs and natron filled Irisi’s veins and arteries completely.

Irisi’s last thoughts were of Khai, of his sweet touch, of her love for him… Her body twitched once more at the memory... She grieved for him…

Pleasure flooded through Irisi with that last touch of the Goddess, feeling herself emptied with each motion of the Goddess’s throat as Sekhmet drank her life away.

Her struggles were at long last ended…

She floated.

All that was left now was her will, holding against that which lay below…

It was done.

The stone of the stele gave no sign of the struggle within, nor did it give any sign when that struggle ended.

As the sun sank below the western horizon, the last of the priests and priestesses made their way through the cleft in the rock.

Khai looked back once, his heart aching. He’d set her swords himself, driven them down into the places in the stone set for them. They would be there for her when she needed them.

In the fading light of the sun, the figure painted on the stele looked almost alive, looked almost like his Irisi, her hair gilded in the light, but the painted eyes were lifeless…

To each side of her on the avenue were the statues of her beloved lions, Nebi as always at guard.

Awan and Djeserit with Rensi’s assistance had magiced them there. At least she wouldn’t be completely alone, not without some comfort.