Servant of the Gods (7 page)

With a smile the priestess Djeserit said, not unkindly, “The Goddess thanks you for your offering and gives you these in gratitude but bids you to understand that this is not your temple…you don’t belong here. Not yet.”

Bewildered, Eres looked at her, her heart sinking. Desperation drove her to question.

“I don’t understand…”

“It’s not for you to understand,” Djeserit said with a small laugh, touching the girl’s hand in sympathy. “It is the Gods. It’s Isis, though, that you seek, Isis you should serve…”

Isis, the Goddess of love, of magic, of the winds.

Eres stared at her doubtfully. “That makes no sense, my Lady. I know nothing of the ways of Isis. I’m a warrior…”

“You will,” the Priestess Djeserit said with a kind smile and reached for the basket. “These may give you some comfort.”

Taking it, Eres looked inside.

Four small lion cubs peered out. Barely weaned, they squealed and grunted, their dark button eyes looked up at her. One squeaked and then took her finger into his mouth to suckle. Eres’s heart wrenched. They were so tiny. Her heart went out to them, knowing that one day they would be predators, but now they were hers.

Djeserit nodded. The instinct to love was there. Whatever she was, this one wasn’t a destroyer, she was a creator. She didn’t belong to Sekhmet.

“Go to Isis,” Djeserit said. “Sekhmet is not yours, not yet…”

And Djeserit thirsted, there was such strength, such energy in the girl, she was so bright in spirit, so strong in will…

With a nod, the young woman took up the basket and her swords…and went in search of the Temple of Isis.

Behind her, the High Priestess of Sekhmet whispered, “May the Gods be with you…Nubiti.”

Golden one.

As befitted the greatest of the Goddesses, Isis’s temple was enormous. It shone brilliantly white beneath the harsh midday sun, glowing almost blindingly in the bright light. As Eres entered that place, something moved within her. She felt a great peace descend, as if she had indeed come home. As if this was where she belonged. Walking into the lush grounds with the palm trees towering high above felt oddly familiar – as if she’d been long gone and had finally found her way home once again.

To one side priests and priestesses fed the hungry with the offerings made to the Goddess by those more fortunate. Children played in the courtyard. Other priests and priestesses saw to the sick and to those in need of care.

It was a place of peace, something Eres hadn’t known since she’d been a child. Stepping inside the temple, she looked up into the serene face of the Great Goddess, the mother Goddess, Isis. Her statue was so beautiful, so real, that it looked as if she might step down from her pedestal to lay her hand on Eres’s head in benediction. A benediction she felt as an ephemeral caress.

A soft breath of awe escaped her.

Once more, all activity within came to a standstill as she walked to the altar, knelt before it, although she was as oblivious to it this time as the last. She laid her swords at Isis’s feet and sat back on her heels to wait. She slipped her hand inside the basket beside her to pet the cubs. Each seized on a finger to suckle. They were hungry, but she had nothing to feed them. Not yet. Her heart opened to them, to those tiny lives within the rushes.

Quietly, one of the priestesses slipped away.

A woman came to kneel beside her, clearly a priestess and a woman of great power. Her skin was dark, much darker than some of the other folk Eres had seen but her features were soft and warm, rounded, beautiful in their own way. Her eyes were the clearest green and lovely. She was dressed simply but well, her jewelry fine. Precious gold sparkled at her throat and ears.

Smiling, the woman looked at Eres and said, softly, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Almost defensively, Eres said, “I’m a warrior. I know nothing of love or of magic…”

“Don’t you?” the priestess said, as she reached into the basket to stroke one furry little head.

In the Priestess’s eyes, Eres could see compassion, warmth…and a great sorrow.

“Do you think Isis doesn’t need warriors to defend those she loves? You are welcome here,” the woman said. “I am Banafrit, High Priestess.”

With a gesture, Banafrit summoned the priestesses and priests, to give Eres welcome. They surrounded her.

“I’m a slave…” Eres said.

Banafrit nodded, her eyes shadowing.

“To the Grand Vizier, to Kamenwati. This we know. But no longer. He will be informed that Isis has accepted you into her service.”

Relief at escaping Kamenwati’s presence and plans was such a great tide through Eres that she very nearly wept.

Kamenwati. Banafrit hid a shudder at the thought of him.

She’d heard talk of him, of the things he did to raise power. Of dark magic, She’d tried to warn the King, to no avail. Kamenwati was his beloved cousin. All the priests and priestesses could do was to increase their protections on the King and warn his guards. Those things had been done. All they could do was wait until Kamenwati showed his hand.

Her mouth tightened.

Banafrit stroked a hand down the girl’s long golden hair, the ripples of it soft beneath her palm. The color was striking. It was like caressing warmed silk, as if it trapped the heat of Ra’s sun in the curling, sunny lengths of it.

As for the girl, she’d been the talk of Thebes for some time. Few didn’t know of her, the foreign warrior with hair the color of sunlight and eyes like the sky whom no man could best in the ring.

Had that to do with the prophecy?

A darkness rises in the desert, the golden one who would come, a warrior, a servant to the Gods…?

She looked at this girl, at the brilliant ripples of her hair, at her pale golden skin…was this the one? Was the time now?

The thought made Banafrit want to weep. She prayed not.

Feeling the touch of the Goddess on her, gentle and loving, her heart trembled a little. It was that time, but not yet. This one had a great deal to learn. There was time. Time to teach her what she would need to know in the days to come.

To look on this girl with her golden hair, her pale skin and those eyes…the colors of the Sky Goddess herself…

“We shall call you Irisi – fashioned by Isis,” Banafrit said. “And Nubiti.”  The golden one.

Startled, Eres looked at the High Priestess. There was a heavy import behind Banafrit’s words. Yet even so… Irisi, Eres. She hadn’t told them her name but they were so similar it might have been fate, indeed, that had led her to this place. A disturbing thought. One didn’t meddle in the affairs of the gods.

Her troubled gaze met Banafrit’s.

The older woman nodded, smiling softly. “Later, Irisi. We’ll speak later. For now, a bed, a place to belong, a home, some food…”

Each word was a wonder for one who’d spent so many years rootless and wandering.

Inclining her head, Banafrit gestured to the others.

They gave Irisi Sanctuary and a home, something she hadn’t truly known in years.

The tally of donations and tributes to the Goddess was quite satisfying, Banafrit thought as she looked over the morning’s offerings. The Goddess would be pleased. There would be plenty to feed those who served the temple as well as those who had little or those who came for spells or healing – preferring the priests and priestesses of Isis to the servants of Sekhmet, sometimes, sadly.

“My lady,” one of the priestesses said as she ran up. “My Lord Kamenwati is here. He demands an audience.”

Unsurprised, Banafrit looked at the young priestess.

Demands. Of the High Priestess of Isis. The Grand Vizier dared much.

There was only one reason Kamenwati would be here and that was Irisi. It was madness. The girl had been chosen by the Goddess herself. That couldn’t be questioned and couldn’t be undone. Even Banafrit couldn’t undo it had she wanted to and she didn’t. Some of what Irisi had told her of her days as Kamenwati’s slave only confirmed Banafrit’s worst fears and suppositions. Some surpassed them. She had little doubt now that he did dark magic within the walls of his house.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“In the temple,” the girl said.

Banafrit was grateful Irisi was undergoing her initiation and was therefore secluded and unaware of the Grand Vizier’s presence.

She nodded. “Very good. Tell him I shall join him shortly. Saini, would you take over here?”

The priest nodded.

Glancing down at her simple gown, Banafrit shook her head and hurried to her quarters. That wouldn’t do. Lord Kamenwati would have to wait a moment or two more. It would serve him well to do so and perhaps give him a few moments of contemplation on the wisdom of demanding the attention of Isis’s High Priestess in the Goddess’s own temple.

A few minutes later, dressed in a fresh gown and kalasaris, her makeup carefully reapplied, and her jewelry sumptuous enough to impress the Grand Vizier, Banafrit stepped into the temple proper, sending the priestesses and priests there away with a wave. She looked to Isis and bowed to the greatest of the Goddesses, the wife of Osiris, daughter of Ra and mother of Hathor, before she turned to face the Grand Vizier.

Like the King, he was a tall, strong man in his prime, although Kamenwati’s visage was harsher and darker than that of the King, his eyes black and cold. There was no humor in him, no lightness, no kindness. She knew the rumors, the stories Irisi had told her, and she felt his wizard’s magic prickle her skin. Priestess of the Goddess of magic, she wasn’t yet prepared to do battle with him, not now when so much depended on her.

She showed none of her apprehensions to Kamenwati.

“Welcome, my lord. To what do I owe a visit from the Grand Vizier?” she asked mildly.

Turning, he fixed his black eyes on her. The fury in them whipped at her.

“I want my slave returned.”

His anger was as intense as a slap to her face, so much so that she warded herself against dark magic, invoking the Goddess here in her own temple as she cloaked herself in the Goddess’s protection.

Keeping her voice even, Banafrit said mildly. “We have no slaves, only priests and priestesses. Any who reside here have been chosen by the Goddess herself.”

She turned her eyes to the representation of Goddess on her pedestal as reminder. Isis saw everything. If she did not, her son Horus did.

The Goddess looked down on them benignly.

Would he dare?

Beneath that gaze even Kamenwati hesitated, it seemed.

“Would you gainsay the Goddess, my lord Kamenwati?” Banafrit asked, her voice carefully calm and reasoned.

Even he wouldn’t dare risk the Goddess’s wrath…would he?

Kamenwati looked at the priestess.

“She is mine,” Kamenwati spat.

Rage boiled and burned in him. How dare she deny him what was rightfully his? Either she or the Goddess?  If he could but reveal the truth of his nature, if he dared it...? Now, though, was not the time. He was close, too close, to his goals. He dared not risk them over a mere slave. Yet that slave had defied him, escaped him. It infuriated him. All his plans for her…all the power he could have raised from her… All the power he’d anticipated raising from her in her time below stairs…

She’d have suffered for a very long time.

Banafrit met Kamenwati’s harsh gaze evenly. “She isn’t yours any longer, she belongs to Isis now.”

To him she said nothing of prophecy. By silent agreement, that was a thing of the Gods and the priests and priestesses who served them. As Grand Vizier, Kamenwati should have been informed of Horus’s prophecy on the day of Narmer’s naming as Heir to the old King, of the words given to Kahotep, Horus’s high priest, on that auspicious day. This, though, was Kamenwati, and he hadn’t been present that day, having not yet been named Vizier. None of them dared give him such power.

If he learned of it…

All the priests and priestesses knew he lusted after power. Knew there were whispers he sought to be more than Grand Vizier, that he longed to be King himself.  What would he do if he knew of the threat to Egypt? How would he use that knowledge? They feared it and, seeing the man before her with his true face, rightly so.

It was on Kamenwati’s lips to say, to demand, “How dare you take from me that which is mine?”

But he wouldn’t, not to the High Priestess and not beneath the eyes of the Goddess herself.

He looked from Banafrit to the Goddess, his eyes narrowed in thwarted fury.

“You may have her,” he said, “but she is mine. I bought her. I own her. She will be mine in the end.”

With that, he stormed out.

It was a great relief for Banafrit to feel him go.