10. Arriving Alive in the Hall of Osiris

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"Seti? I need your help." 

A knock on his cabin door roused Seti from a half-sleep. Fumbling with the door bolt, he opened to find Mehu standing in the last light of dusk.  

"I thought I could do it myself, but apparently not." 

Seti stepped outside and followed Mehu towards the back of the ship, passing by the sailors eating their dinner. None of them looked up.

The ship was moving strangely and it took Seti a confused minute or two to figure out what was different. They were drifting on the waves. The turbines had stopped.

"Why have we stopped? Has something gone wrong?" 

"No." Mehu moved the silver wheels on the transportation lockers until the internal cogs lined up and the doors clicked open. "Here, help me lift them out."

Seti didn't move. Mehu looked up at him, deep black rings circling his eyes and a rash covering the right side of his still pleasant face. He looked as if he hadn't been sleeping at all, either. 

"Answer me a question first."

Mehu straightened up but didn't rise. "Still want to know why you're here?"

"No, that question's been answered. Who was watching from the shadows in the shrine of the Star of Bekumen when I was first summoned there?" 

A smile played on Mehu's face. "You noticed that? If I wasn't impressed with you before, I am now."

"Who was it?"

"My father, Lord Amunkheper. He wanted to see if you really were a sensitive like the oracles said. Which, so am I, by the way, and so is he. Not as good as you are, as we've seen. But still." 

That told Seti everything he needed to know, and the remaining pieces that had been eluding him for so long fell into place. He had been selected first by the plot and then thrown to the counterplot as an expendable, but versatile pawn. Mehu could have found the stars himself, given time, and after both Seti and Neb-ka were dead. 

Another question rose in Seti's mind, although he thought he knew the answer. 

"What oracles? Both you and the prince mentioned oracles."

"I'm sorry. I can't tell you that." Mehu seemed genuinely regretful. "Let's just say, they were very convincing."  

Seti simply nodded. They'd come from Dendera, just like the information about the stars and the plasma lanterns. 

"Help me now?" Mehu asked, raising his eyebrows. 

Together they rolled the stars out of the locker. Mehu reached an arm back inside and pulled out a leather pouch from which a hammer and chisel emerged. He set the chisel carefully against a knot on the top of the star and pounded the end of it with the hammer until chunks the size of fists were falling around his knees, reducing the star to rubble. 

Shards. The shards the foreign kings had possessed. 

Mehu looked up, breathing hard from the exertion. "Help me throw the pieces overboard." 

"Why are you doing this? I thought we were to bring them back safely."

"It's better this way, trust me. We don't need all of them. And both you and I will finally be able to sleep." 

Mehu chose out two shards, one from each star, and wrapped them in the leather pouch that he laid back in the locker before he began to scoop up the remaining pieces and hurl them overboard into the Great Green. Seti squatted next to him and soon there was nothing left of the stars but some black grit and splinters on the ship's deck.  

"Feel better?" Mehu asked, as he hoisted himself up with the aide of the ship's railing.

"Yes and no."

Mehu laughed a low, coughing laugh. "I know what you mean. But we really do need our rest. Tomorrow is going to be very eventful day." 

Seti's stomach tightened. Mehu had just dropped another clue. "What. . . what will happen? You already know. Tell me. "

Mehu stood only an arm's length away, the golden rays of the setting sun that glowed behind him shrouding his features in shadow and making Seti squint. 

"What will happen? We'll return to Egypt. From that point on . . . who knows?" Mehu said quietly.


The ships intercepted them a few hours after dawn as they approached the silty mouth of the Nile.  Seti counted twelve vessels heading at full-sped towards their own convoy as he held on for dear life to the rope loop attached to his cabin. 

"Pharaoh's fleet!" screamed the lithe, brown captain from where he was hugging the prow of their ship with his hands and feet like a monkey gone mad. "Grab your knives lads, it looks like we might to have to fight our way back in! Rudder! Hard starboard!"  

Pharaoh's fleet? How? The stars had said Pharaoh wasn't involved? Seti frowned and shook his head. This was wrong. 

The solar turbines wailed and shimmied as the ship swerved to the right, cutting away from the convoy and heading toward the Delta that was merely a dark strip on the horizon. 

Two of the on-coming ships immediately changed course and sped over the glistening, green water to cut them off. Mehu emerged from his cabin, a polished iron dagger strapped to his waist and a beaten copper short sword in his right hand. With long strides he moved as close to the edge of the ship as he could. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he watched the battle that was erupting around them.  

The first ship in their convoy had been intercepted and even from where he stood, Seti could see the fighting as Pharaoh's sailors -- or whoever they were -- disabled the vessel and boarded it. 

The two ships that had veered out to intercept his own ship were coming dangerously close, the golden hawks that decorated the sides glinting in the sunlight, the boarding harpoons lowering rapidly. 

Seti realised with fright that he had no weapon. There would be no way he could defend himself when they were boarded. 

Mehu and the captain were talking but he couldn't hear them through the wind and grinding of the turbines as they bounced over the waves. Seti felt ill, and he released the rope to stumble a few paces and retch over the side of the ship. When he straighten up again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and seeing white exploding stars in his vision, Mehu was coming towards him, a long, wooden oar in his hand. 

"You said you could swim, didn't you?" Mehu shouted.

"Yes!" Seti croaked with a nod. 

"Then have a safe journey back home and thank you! " Mehu turned toward the pursuing ships for a few moments, lifting the oar up with one arm. Then he knifed his body around, swinging the oar full-force at Seti's head. 

Instinctively, Seti pulled back and lost his balance, toppling over the side of the ship with a cry and falling head first into the choppy water below. 

The shock of the cold enveloping his body and the suddenness of the attack paralysed his thinking and it was only after a few moments that he began to fail his arms and kick in all directions in an attempt to rise back to the surface again. The tip of the oar had hit his left upper arm and shocks of pain radiated through his shoulder as he moved, holding in as much air as he could and keeping his eyes focused on the jittery light streaming from above. 

Was this right? Was he supposed to drown?

Without warning, a strong water current shoved him forward and he felt something wrap around him from behind. A sea creature! 

Seti struggled hard to free himself, his lungs burning and the urge to open his mouth and breathe becoming overwhelming. 

Without being conscious of how it happened, he found himself staring into a huge, green human-like face that had materialised out of the murky water in front of him.  Long, black tendrils of hair snaked out in all directions and thousands of yellow and white lotus flowers floated like a crown on its head. Seti was drawn forward toward the greenish mud that fell in folds down the chest of the creature like sagging breasts. 

Hapi! The river god! It was the Nile that was pulling and pushing him forward, attempting to get a grasp on him, not some sea creature! Seti looked down and saw he was being held by Hapi's mud fingers just as red spots began to pepper his vision and everything began to go black. 

The god smiled and threw Seti violently upwards, sending him flying out of the water in a long arc. 

Seti had time to draw in several deep lungfuls of air before he landed on wet sand and had the wind knocked out of him. Waves lapped at his bare feet as he struggled to breathe, sand and brine clogging his nose. Eventually, he crawled up and away from the water, turning himself over and looking back out over the Great Green. 

The battle was still going on. Three of the ships in their convoy had been captured -- white banners hanging from their prows -- and the rest had scattered or were engaging the enemy. 

Have a safe journey back home and thank you. 

He knew he should be grateful, and he was. Mehu had saved him, letting him escape instead of killing him outright when it would have been so convenient. Had that been the show with the oar? Was it to look as if he'd been murdered? And if yes, just how much of a show was the whole battle that was still being waged on the water before him? 

Seti searched for Neb-ka's ship and saw it was one still fighting. 

Mehu's ship he couldn't locate. 

Seti watched until all of the ships in his convoy had either been captured or sunk, then he picked himself up, brushed off as much sand as he could and began to walk. 

He had no other choice. 

In the following weeks, as he made his way up the Nile and back towards home, he was occasionally able to catch a ride on a small boat and work for his passage.  

When no boats were available, he stopped in villages and helped hoe fields or drive goats from one pasture to another in exchange for a bowl of porridge or some roasted fish. 

He assisted funerary priests set up the ritual offerings of beer and bread at the graves of the newly deceased and slept under the roofs of the long deceased, curling up against their offering shrines, a stick by his side to push away curious snakes. 

He helped repair fishing nets and crumbling mud-brick walls. 

He conversed with people and listened to their gossip when he was too tired to speak himself. 

He watched, listened and coordinated. 

And all the details that he saw and heard coalesced during the long, dusty hours on the road when all he had to do was place one foot in front of the other, wrapping themselves around the information the stars had whispered to him.

Seti, who had so long been content to record what others had observed, now began to mentally write his own dispatches. And he came to believe two things:

Firstly, that he could see both the past and future of Egypt. 

And secondly, that he had died and arrived at the Hall of Osiris.

He felt his heart being removed and placed on the cosmic scales, weighed against the feather of Ultimate Truth. 

He was doing the impossible. In reality, he was not walking through Egypt; he was walking through the Hall of Osiris. 

 Still breathing.  


__________

A/N: In Ancient Egyptian religion the heart of the deceased was weighed on a scales after death in the Hall of the god of the Underworld. If it was found that he or she had lived their life in accordance with the Ultimate Truth (= the laws of the gods, depicted as a feather) then they would pass into the next world. If not, a horrible little monster by the name of "Eater of Souls" would devour them and they would cease to exist.  

The picture at the top shows a successfully weighed soul chatting with Osiris. 


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