Here it is: The first part of the new first chapter of the sequel to Limbo's Child. Those of you who know me, know I like to do this a lot. I get the plot settled and then
BAM! I have to change it all at the last moment. Oh well. It's a goodie.
This might make it in the final book it might not. I meant it to replace the old first chapter (available
here) but my wife begged me to keep that one in. At the moment I consider this a
"secret" chapter. That is, it's not really crucial to the rest of the story, it just contains relevant backstory that would make the story more enjoyable. These "secret" chapters contain some mild spoilers, but nothing too bad, but you've been warned, so no whining if you read on. Ok? BTW - this has been through exactly one edit, by me, and not my editor, so it's kinda rough in places.
Parts II and III will be posted later this week. And I will be doing a live reading of the entire chapter on Livestream this week so stay tuned for details.
And with all that throat-clearing out of the way...I give you, The Secret Prologue: The Mummy Part I.
The Secret Prologue:
The Mummy
The body had been dead for forty
days, but Pepy was still terrified of it.
It wasn’t that he was squeamish around bodies. As the head royal embalmer he had mummified
twenty-two royal persons. As apprentice to
the last head embalmer he had assisted with forty-five! No it wasn’t dead bodies that bothered
him. It was this particular dead body.
She was a lovely thing, young, no
more than fourteen, a daughter of one of the pharaoh’s minor wives, but a
favored one, but it wasn’t her age that was so troubling, many died young, even
in the palaces of the god-king. No, it
was the manner in which she died. She
was found, in the dawn, pale and lifeless on her own bed, safe in the
palace. The only mark on her was a
subtle wound on the neck, two tiny punctures, small and needle like, like the
bite of an asp, but the fang holes were so far apart, it could only have been made
by an enormous asp with a mouth the size of a hyena. Not another
trace of disease or injury was on her, but there she was, calm and
peaceful, like she was sleeping with her arms crossed, as if someone had
arranged the corpse for death, but the doors had been locked, from the
inside.
The priests were beside themselves
with anxiety and thought it a terrible omen.
They wanted her chopped into pieces and tossed into the Nile but the
pharaoh forbad it. Things only got worse
from there. Pepy himself had to make the
small incision to remove the internal organs in preparation of embalming, but
when the knife cut the flesh, it was utterly bloodless. Not a single drop of blood was left in the
girl. Her flesh was as bloodless as a
piece of salted beef in the marketplace.
Half the priests and nearly all of his assistants attempted to flee the
room at that point until forced back at the point of the guards’ spears. Pepy had nearly blanched himself, but he
carried on. Ramses the Great was not a
man you wanted to disobey. He had to
carry on alone though. The others
wouldn’t pull themselves away from the walls.
Pepy dutifully removed the lungs, stomach, liver and intestine and
placed them for preservation in the four sacred canopic jars with the heads of
the four sons of Horus. He took the
heart, he yib, the seat of truth and knowledge and placed it carefully back
into the body. She would need it when
her soul would be judged. He packed the
empty abdominal cavity with linen and natrun, the sacred salt that dried out
the body, but he had to say all the prayers himself. The priests were too scared.
Now he was back to finish her. The body had been sealed in this chamber
forty days ago. She needed to be wrapped
in the precious linens and resins. When
he broke the seal and entered the chamber, everything seemed normal, but that
all changed when he pulled back the mummies linen covering. In forty days the mummy should have browned,
the eyes and cheeks becoming sunken, the lips taut. She had hardly changed at all. There was some anxious foot-shuffling on the
stone floor when they saw her, but the others kept their tongues. There was nothing to do but get on with it.
As he went about wrapping her body
in the resin-drenched linens, placing the sacred eye of Horus over the small
incision on her stomach, intoning the sacred prayers beneath his breath because
the priests were too scared to, Pepy couldn’t help but think that everything
about this was wrong. These rituals
should be completed in the daylight, with great ceremony, but here they were in
the middle of the night, with only a handful of priests and guards. The pharaoh had insisted it be done as soon
as the fortieth day had set, so here they were, after sunrise, in the embalming
chamber with only a few oil lamps to light the way. The pharoah had procured a dozen large jars
of the most precious resin for the process, but he could only persuade two of
his apprentices to come, so he had to carry two of the jars himself. But the worst part, the very worst part of it all was him.
He had arrived late, dressed in long
blue-black linens and wearing the mask of the jackal-headed god Anubis, which
completely covered his face. When he entered
the guards and priests turned their backs to him and studiously stared at the
walls, avoiding even looking at him, almost as if pretending he didn’t
exist. Pepy’s assistants obviously
didn’t know the protocol, but quickly stumbled over each other to shove their
noses in the nearest corners of the room they could find like naughty
school-children. He was tall and gaunt
and though no one saw his eyes, you could tell he was watching you, intently. Pepy didn’t even know who he was. He wondered if anyone did. He had never seen him before. He had only heard rumors. He was nameless, faceless and appeared only
at the most dire times, plague, famine, war or perhaps the death of a
pharaoh. He never spoke, and even the
Priests of Amun were afraid of him and bowed and backed away whenever he
entered. If he ever spoke or held
counsel with anyone, it was only with the Pharaoh and then only in
private. He could disappear for years,
but in times of distress, he would appear, and it was rumored that he had been
doing it, since the days of Djoser the Great more than a thousand years ago. No one could be certain it was the same
figure behind the mask but everyone thought so.
Some said he was the god Anubis himself, others, only that he was an
ancient magician. Pepy wasn’t given to
idle rumors or superstition, but the fact that he appeared here, at the
embalming of a minor princess was troubling and Pepy was already nervous
enough. But he couldn’t do his work with his nose to the wall, so he carried on,
and tried not to think of the bloodless corpse, the fang marks or the ominous
figure hovering over him like a vulture.
Soon, however, he found his rhythm despite
his fear and worked quickly but carefully through the night, wrapping the body,
working from the abdomen to the feet and then from the feet back to the head,
placing the sacred amulets between the folds of linen at their proper
places. He placed the golden
finger-coverings on each of the dead princesses’ delicate digits, then placed
the ankh, the symbol of life in the palm of her hand before wrapping each hand
carefully. Then he folded the arms
across the chest and wrapped them against the body, binding them tight in layer
after layer, so that she had the same repose she had had when they found her
dead. He worked carefully this way
through eleven layers of linens and resins until he reached her neck and
head. He placed a tiny amulet in the
shape of a headrest, behind her head, an emblem of the hope that she would at
last find rest in the afterlife. It was
nearing dawn, under the best conditions it took days to properly do the job,
and with his assistants’ noses planted firmly against the wall, it should have
taken even longer, but somehow he had managed it, and gave the princess a
respectable wrapping. He was about to
place the last amulet, the eye of Ra, over her mouth and finish the wrapping
when the “vulture” spoke.
“Stop.” The black draped figure behind Pepy said in a
low voice.
Something clattered to the ground. Pepy spun around. He checked his hand. He hadn’t dropped the amulet. Thank the gods! That would have been
sacrilege. He glanced around. A guard was slowly crouching down to retrieve
his spear from the floor. By Horus!
thought Pepy, what courage! he thought sarcastically, but then he noticed he
was clutching his own heart with the hand that didn’t hold the amulet. It was pounding.
The figure for his part, was calm
and inscrutable. For a minute Pepy
wasn’t certain he hadn’t imagined it speaking, but then it took a step forward
and spoke again.
“I will finish her.”
Pepy froze, blinked and knew not
what to say. Was the menacing figure a
royal embalmer as well as a magician?
Pepy looked around the room. The
guards were frozen, the priests were muttering prayers for their own salvation,
and his assistants were grinding their own faces into the relief sculpture as
if they were hoping they disappear into the decoration. Pepy looked down at the mummy of the
princess, her pale face shining and all too life-like and then at the amulet in
his hand. When he looked up a pale,
gaunt, corpse-like white hand had reached out from behind the tall figure’s
robes. It had fingering coverings of its
own, made of silver, as if it were a mummy itself! Pepy decided not to question him. He put a knee to the ground, bowed his head,
and offered up the amulet. The black
masked figure took the amulet and moved past him noiselessly. When it reached
the other side of the chamber it inclined and its head to them and spoke one
last time.
“Go.” He said again in a voice
like death. “Seal the chamber, return in thirty days to entomb her.”
No one waited for a second
command. The guards and priests piled up
at the door, only a scornful look by their master kept Pepy’s apprentices from
doing the same. They danced on their
feet until he got to the door, but couldn’t bear it anymore. Once it was clear they were outside. Pepy would have to reprimand them later. He was a master embalmer after all and they
should have followed him dutifully out of the tomb, but their scolding would
have to wait. He too was anxious to
leave. At the doorway Pepy looked back
at the black figure standing over the body of the princess. “Seal the doors?” he thought. There was only one door to the embalming
chamber. He opened his mouth and nearly
spoke the question, but then he looked into the empty eyes of the Anubis mask
and thought better of it. Best not to
question the mysterious person. He
certainly had his own way of getting out.
Or at least he hoped he did. He
would hate to come back and find him there, though something told Pepy the
mysterious figure could survive the thirty days internment without any
effort. Pepy gave one short bow from
the neck which the figure graciously returned, though more slowly. Pepy swallowed hard before he pulled the
doors shut. He quickly pulled a cord
from his side and ran it through both door handles and tied it off. He then produced a lump of soft beeswax mixed
with clay from a small pouch and pressed the wax tightly around the knot. As he pressed the seal of his signet ring
into the wax he spoke over his shoulder to his frightened apprentices.
“No one is to speak of this.
Understood?”
Pepy turned around but his inquiry
was met only with the sound of sandals on stone departing into the predawn
darkness. He huffed an angry sigh for
the moment, but then, alone in the dark, he decided to drop his remaining
dignity and follow his apprentices’ prudent example and fled.
