THE.

100TH.

GENERATION.

THE IBIS PROPHECY BOOK ONE.

by JUSTINE SARACEN.

Acknowledgments.

Few writers, and certainly not this one, can write in a vacuum. I want to rst thank Dr. Angelique Corthals, who, in a sense, gave me modern Egypt and through the bene t of her Egyptology, the ancient one as well. Thanks also to Derek Ragin, for providing in his own gifted and charming person the eponymous character of the novel. I am also grateful to those wise women-Lorie, Elizabeth, Ilona, Inga, and Carmen, who, out of sheer friendship, consented to critique early drafts of the work.

Thanks to Sheri for a splendid cover with real hieroglyphics and authentic tomb images, to Stacia Seaman for her deft touch with the editorial " ne-tooth comb," to Shelley Thrasher who, like the toughest buyer in the souq, haggled down my writing peculiarities to a manageable few, and to Radclyffe, for inviting me to the marketplace in the rst place.

Dedication.

For Angelique, my Wadjet, who began the tale as a joke, and is the spirit that will waft through it forever THE 100TH GENERATION.

PROLOGUE:.

ORIGINAL SIN.

Pharaoh wept in his sleep. Everywhere before his burning eyes the beasts, the winds and waters, and the hills cried out. Pitiless, the Sun Disk rose and smote them, r endering them dumb. A en Seth, iron-eyed guardian of the light, loosed his spear upon the vanquished.

But lo, a humble priest stepped forward, an amulet in his hand, and the spear blade shatter ed into spar ks upon it. G athering the spar ks with the power of his breath, he sucked them in-and spat them out again as words. "Khetet! Rekhi renusen. Djedi medjatsen ," blazed into the air and faded.Pharaoh Meremptah awoke, clutching the bed cloth to his pounding heart. To his chamberlain he called, "Light the tor ches. S ummon the court!" He rose in the darkness, donned the immaculate cer emonial kilt, and strode to the Great Hall. A ere he sat upon his thr one, white-lipped and shaken, while his court assembled.

Roused betimes from his sleep, the priest Rekemheb dressed quickly while Pharaoh's messenger waited before his door.

His wife, disquieted, stood by him. "Why does the god-king summon you so early?" she asked, laying on his wide collar of lapis lazuli and tying it in the back. "A e light will not come for hours."

A e priest looked at his children-the girl, with ochre-stained fi ngers curled in a fi st, and the boy smiling even in his sleep-and his hear t was light. "It will have something to do with the N ew Year ceremonies, I am sure. Be sure to wake the children in time for the dawn."

* 15 *

He embraced his wife with brief tenderness. "Be full of joy today, as I am full of joy for you," he whispered. A en he turned away and hastened with the messenger along the still-dark streets to the palace. To his surprise, the doors to the G reat Hall were thrown open and the cour t stood in attendance. Palace guards stepped to his side and escor ted him down the center aisle to the throne. Bewildered, he fell to his knees at the feet of the god-king, his hands raised and open in the gesture of adoration.

Pharaoh leaned forward on his golden stool. "A e gods have given me a vision this night and hav e revealed their chosen one. I speak his name: Rekemheb, Priest of the Temple of H athor." Taking up a wide pectoral ornament from the hands of a ser vant, Pharaoh placed its chain o ver the bowed head. "A is is the sign of thy sacred offi ce. Go now with this on thy heart to prepare for the Opening of the New Year."

Rekemheb glanced up for the briefest moment at Pharaoh's face and caught his breath. Where he had expected strength, he saw fear.

He rose with lowered head and backed down the length of the throne room, eyes searching among the cour tiers for explanation. H e saw only surprise and confusion to match his o wn. At the door, the priest turned and hurried along the corridor . A t each of the r ed-painted columns, braziers of burning oil cast trembling semicircles of light upon the stone.

Guards stepped aside to let him pass.

As Rekemheb came to the great pylons that fronted the royal palace, he stopped at the last brazier. Drawing the chain over his head, he held the fi ligree gold plaque toward the fl ame and studied its sparkling images. At the center stood the sacred Balance weighing the heart of a man, witnessed by the gods of the underworld. Around the periphery, in shallow relief, the forty-two Judges sat enclosed in a vulture's wings. A e priest's hand shook, for he held in jeweled miniature the entry into death.

"You do well to tremble, Hathor Priest," a voice said, startling him.

He turned to see a man, hook nosed and gaunt, standing in the shadows.

A e long palette and reed case of a scribe hung from his shoulder.

"I do not know you, sir, nor that whereof you speak," Rekemheb said courteously. He drew the chain o ver his head again, pulling his priestly side lock up through it.

"But I know you," the scribe r eplied, holding his palette to his hip like a weapon. "And I will tell your story."

"My story? Of being chosen for the Rebirth of the Year?"

"Of being chosen for the rebirth of the gods. It is a great honor, and you will die for it. Yet a child of y our line will bring y ou forth into the * 16 *

THE 100TH GENERATION.

world again in the hundr edth generation. A en you shall be witness to these things: the Balance, the Book, and the bearing of the Child. A is is our hope against the Aton, rising in the west."

"A e Aton? But the Sun Disk cult is gone. I ts priests ar e scattered.

Surely-"

A e scribe laid the tip of a bony fi nger on the amulet. "Hold fast to this. It is the prophecy."

Rekemheb stood speechless as the scribe faded into the shadows and then, bemused, he descended the wide steps of the palace. A e dawning city was still quiet, for every man was in his house preparing for the New Year festival. A e Dog Star had appeared, and in the east, the molten sun cast the street in a comforting orange glow.

A en he saw them, stepping out from behind the granary. Two men armed with spears, and a thir d one who ought to hav e been banished along with his usurper god. A e Priest of A ton glared at him with ir on hatred in his eyes.

Rekemheb bolted, drawing his pursuers away fr om his house and family. His heart aching, he ran thr ough alleys, along mud-brick walls, over heaps of refuse in the streets.

White-hot, the spear blade pierced his back, throwing him onto the dusty ground. He opened his mouth, desperate to inhale, but no air came.

He felt only the searing, nauseating pain of the metal tearing up ward through his fl esh as the spear shaft fell. He lay paralyzed and choking, and he tasted the fr othy blood fi lling his mouth. D read hissed over him like locusts as with dying eyes he watched the scorching sun disk rise.

* 17 *

* 18 *

CHAPTER I:.

GOD IS GREAT.

Aaallllaaaaahh uakbar!"

The faint whining cry of the muezzin that drifted toward them in the darkness told them the city was near.

"Aaallaaahh uakbar!" It came again along the breeze as, reluctantly, Valerie Foret slowed her camel. Unbeliever that she was, she had always loved the rst call to prayer, imagining bearded muezzins summoning the faithful through cupped hands from atop their minarets.

Now she resented it, for it brought them to a halt. She stopped the moment Ahmed did and sat impatiently while his honking camel broke rst at the front and then at the hind legs and he dismounted.

The excavation foreman unrolled the prayer rug he kept on his saddle and stepped out of his sandals. Scooping up handfuls of the limestone sand, he puri ed his hands and feet and turned eastward .

"Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem." With open hands cupped to his ears, he began.

Valerie rode a respectful dozen meters farther on, annoyed. She tapped with her knuckles on her knee, recalling the forced rosaries of her childhood. Ave Marie...Mere de Dieu. Oh hell. They should have been in Giza by now, instead of a kilometer away from the pyramids.

She could see them now in the increasing light, the great tombs of Khufu, Khephren, and Menkaure. In the predawn sky that silhouetted them, they had a majesty they would lack the rest of the day, when the plateau would be crawling with tourists and vendors. Now, mute black monuments to an ancient faith, they towered over the new one.

Restlessly, she laid her booted foot over the crosspiece of the saddle, brushing off the powdery sand that had collected in the folds of her trousers. She took off her hat and rubbed her gritty scalp. Six * 19 *

months in the sun had lightened her brown hair at the edges and tanned her like a farmer, from her elbows to her hands. She dgeted. So close, and so much to be done. Derek. She had so much to tell him. Things that would knock him over. And Jameela. Yes, Jameela. She tried to moisten dry lips but had no saliva.

"Y'alla bina!" Her foreman was suddenly beside her, brushing sand from the tail of his turban. "You will wish to return to the site right away, I think. I will get supplies today and have camels ready to go tonight."

"I wish we could, Ahmed, but we can't leave for two days. As for the provisions, I will get a few things at the souq, but I depend on you for the rest. I have people to visit and an opera to see."

"Opera?" A slight drawing together of his thick gray eyebrows indicated his astonishment. "You stay two days to see an opera?"

"I know that delays us for another day, but the singer is like a brother to me, and I missed his last visit here." She looked over toward Ahmed's leathery, avuncular face, which had grown familiar in the months of the project. "Besides, he's performing Orpheus, about a man who visits the underworld. A good omen for an Egyptologist, don't you think? By the way, you will need to hire another camel. He's coming back with us."

"An opera singer in the desert," the Egyptian replied with studied neutrality. "Very good."

Squinting in the half-light, she barely heard him. Giza, nally, had come into sight, a wide gray-brown stain behind the pyramids. She tapped her camel lightly with her goad, urging the tired beast to move a little faster. She felt excitement growing, in spite of her fatigue.

Soon the travelers arrived at the west faade of Menkaure, desert-most of the pyramids. Without looking up, Valerie sensed the edi ce that lled space above them, rendering them trivial. Lines of men and boys swarmed toward them, peddlers with their sacks of postcards and plaster sphinxes. "As salaamu 'alaykum."

"Wa 'alaykum as salaam. " They passed through them to the next phalanx of "guides" who recited a melange of facts and ctions about the tombs, and the stablemen, who for a few pounds would snap a photo of a foreigner sitting bravely on one of their emaciated horses. She tapped her camel with her goad again, urging it faster. She hated what the site had become. There was more refuse on the ground now-soda cans and plastic water bottles and countless cigarette butts.

* 20 *

At Khufu she could see Giza clearly under a gray morning haze, its apartment blocks and sooty squalor encroaching like lava upon the pyramids. "It's a pity," she said to her companion. "Egypt swallows up its own history."

"There will be more history, Doctor. God is ever telling His story."

Valerie shrugged. "The Egyptians trust too much in God and too little in themselves, I think."

"Imshii!" A rock ew out of nowhere and thudded against her camel. The snorting beast danced sideways, and she spun around to see a boy with a sling hanging open from his hand. She thought, absurdly, of the biblical David.

"Uh!" A second stone slammed into the side of her head. Stunned, she swayed blindly on the saddle, raising her hand to her ear. Bright pain radiated through her head; infantile fears, jagged pieces of memory like shattered glass, showered down on her. Con nement, hard hands thrashing her, a stone oor rising up to meet her. "Maman," the child had whimpered uselessly.

Then sight returned.

As she tottered, a bearded man sprang upward at her, his eyes bright with rectitude. She raised both arms against him, but he seized the cloth of her shirt, yanking her forcefully toward him. She toppled from the high saddle into his arms, and they fell together onto the sand.

Furious, she rolled away from him, rose to her knees, and snatched her pistol from her holster. Ahmed, somehow dismounted, threw himself at a second man. A few meters away, peddlers had a third man on the ground.

Panting, Valerie struggled to her feet, still pointing her trembling pistol at her attacker, who had not risen from the ground.

He stared at her, composed, his glance intense, intimate. "You insult God," he snarled, "and your punishment will come."

Her nger tightened on the trigger.

From behind her a small hand reached out and touched her wrist.

Dark ngers with milky white nails pressed gently into her skin. "Do not," a woman's voice said softly.

Valerie lowered her arm without taking her eyes from the attacker.

"Lady." A uniformed soldier suddenly stood in front of her, huf ng, his carbine across his chest. "You knowing these men?"

* 21 *

Behind him, other soldiers reached into the roil of men and pulled them apart.

"No. Of course not. I am an archaeologist." She replied in Arabic, to his obvious relief, and pointed toward her foreman. "And this man is my rayis. He will con rm that we have just come in from Ghard Abu Sennan, where we are working. With government permission." She laid her free hand on her shirt pocket, suggesting the letter was there.

"Yes, Captain." Ahmed nodded to the soldier, who was clearly not an of cer. "We have just come from the desert and know nothing of these men. But now, as you can see, the lady is injured and we must hurry into Giza."

"Yes, of course. Then it is the fanatics. They have been causing trouble at the tourist places. But don't worry. These will not bother you again."

"Y'alla bina!" he shouted at his men, who fast-marched the three bloodied attackers and the boy toward the causeway. Twisting in the grip of a gendarme half again his size, the bearded one turned back for a moment, his expression unreadable.

Valerie cupped her right hand over the throbbing wound on her cheek.

"Are you all right, Doctor?" Ahmed took hold of the rein and couched the camel so she could remount.

Valerie looked down and realized she still held the grip of the holstered pistol. She let it go nally, exing her cramped ngers at her side. "My God. I almost shot him, Ahmed. I almost shot a man. This woman stopped me."

Shielding her eyes against the light of the sun, she turned around to see who had stayed her hand.

She recoiled. A vulture hulked on the lowest block of the pyramid swinging its leathery head left and right, as if noting the outcome of the incident. Savage eyes watched her for a moment, and then the beast unfolded its wings. Black feather- ngers opened at the tips as the creature hopped awkwardly off the block. Within inches of the ground, the wings beat laborious strokes, drawing its mass slowly upward.

Finally the creature gained height and banked in a wide arc over the desert.