"Yeah, and they don't like it when you try to change it. He refused to take me to the Duat, so I had to do it myself." He picked up the pistol that lay by the side of the sarcophagus.

"My God! You mean you killed yourself just to come and get me?

Oh, you sweet, insane man. How could you be sure you'd nd me or ever make it back?"

Derek massaged his ankles, trying to bring blood to his still-numb feet. "I gured one underworld was like the other, and I'd kind of 'been there, done that,' you know? Onstage, I mean."

"So that's what you were doing in the Hall, playing Orpheus to my Euridice."

"Yes, but that was just to get in. I hadn't much thought about getting out again."

"Who would have believed that the way back was through Apophis? There's certainly no mention of that in the mythology. I wonder if Jehuti knows..."

Derek's attention had wandered. "Uh...Val? Where's the Bedouin woman? She was right here. I put your body down right next to hers."

"Seth was right, then." Valerie touched the empty spot on the tomb oor. "He said she was alive." She shook her head. "I don't know who to believe anymore. I don't even trust Rekemheb now. He tried to keep you out of the Duat, but he sent me into it. And what about Auset and Yussif?"

"The army found us before we got to Luxor. They arrested me, but they promised to take Auset on to the hospital. Yussif went with her.

But when I came back here, Rekemheb kept saying, 'Go to Dendara.

She will be at Dendara.' What does that mean?"

Valerie looked at the scroll case that still hung from her shoulder.

"It means the story's not over."

"What are you talking about?"

"Things have changed, Derek. We're not helpless pawns anymore.

We've made it back from the underworld. We're important to the gods, and we can make demands. You are the chosen father of the child, and you have just de ed the gods." She was on her feet nally. She brushed silt from her pants with several decisive slaps.

"And I am their storyteller."

* 254 *

CHAPTER XXXVI:.

EPIPHANY.

Praise God," Yussif whispered. "The gods," he corrected himself and looked at Auset. "How can you be sure?"

She wiped her cheeks with her ngertips. "My water just broke.

The baby's coming."

Yussif looked down in horror at the trickle of uid that seeped down her ankle and onto the stone. "Hathor!" he called out. "Where are you?"

"Ohh." Auset bent over, clutching at the cloth of his shirt.

"Hathor!" Yussif shouted again, fearful for the rst time.

Something behind them breathed noisily, and Yussif turned. A dwarf with a beard and a mane of wild hair stood in the doorway. Under one hairy arm he held a rolled-up object and in the other a clay urn nearly as tall as he was. He waddled into the sanctuary, throwing his weight from side to side with each laborious step. Pivoting around to stop before them, he pressed the rolled mat into Yussif's hands. Then he stepped away and with two hands tipped the urn toward the center of the stone oor.

A frothy, yellow-brown liquid owed out in a widening pool, hissing softly as it spread. The smell of fresh beer was pleasant as the uid covered the stones and rose in a dense vapor. In a moment the sanctuary oor was dry again, with a sheen of polish coating the stone.

Yussif looked down at the bundle he held, a linen mattress some three inches in thickness, lled with straw. Without speaking, the dwarf took it and spread it out on the oor next to the rear wall.

"I'm guessing that's for me, Yussif."

* 255 *

"Ah, yes, of course." He guided her to the wall and held her gently as she eased herself onto it. His hands shook slightly as he knelt beside her and unbuckled her sandals. A familiar voice sounded behind him.

"Djed meddu, Yussif." The glowing form of Rekemheb appeared, standing before the goddess Hathor and holding her golden stool. He repeated the formal declaration in strangely accented English. "The words are spoken. The prophecy is ful lled." Then he smiled with an expression that seemed to say, "I told you so."

"Grandfather!" Yussif shuf ed to one side on his knees, and Rekemheb set the stool down next to him.

The Mother Goddess seated herself regally, and when she had arranged her skirts, she bent toward him. "Yussif Nabil, you have brought my daughter to me in your arms. Thus is your faith strong."

"Faith?" He shook his head. "I don't know. I came here for Auset's sake. You promised to take care of her."

"And so I shall. But this hour is for you as well. Behold..."

Auset moaned with the onset of the next contraction. Yussif adjusted her cushion with inept tenderness until the pains subsided.

She smiled weakly, but then her glance slid past him, consternation clouding her face. He turned to see what troubled her.

A monster stood in the doorway. His wide chest was half covered by a collar of gold and turquoise, but above it, on muscular shoulders, a wide feathered neck rose to an enormous falcon head.

"My son Horus." The Mother Goddess nished her introduction.

The two mortals inched as the god came near. He bent over them, half prince, half raptor, gray wrinkled eyelids blinking over predatory eyes the size of walnuts. Around them dark feathers showed the divine markings, the lines that fell like tears below the iris, one in a curve and the other straight down.

The rapine head came close, and the sharp hooked beak opened.

"Horus greets the mother of the gods' child," he said, his high, shrill voice at odds with his ferocity. He bowed formally and was about to back away when he seemed to have an afterthought and pivoted around again. "The son of Ra does not taste like chicken."

They looked after him, speechless.

Another god entered the chamber. His step, as he approached, was light, as if he preferred not to be seen. And yet he was conspicuous, for his camel-like snout and long upright ears made him look both * 256 *

disdainful and slightly comical. He stared down at the birthing woman without comment.

"Seth," Hathor-the-hostess said. "I am surprised to see you here."

"Surprised? How so? I come like my brother Horus, to pay my respects. Am I not one of the sons of Ra?" He turned without waiting for a reply and went to join his brother at the door of the chamber.

Frowning, Hathor waved the two out into the vestibule and snapped her ngers. A young woman appeared in a simple linen dress, her hair covered by a cloth. She held folds of white cotton in one hand and in the other hand a glass bowl of what appeared to be wine. "The Lady Meskhenet will attend you," Hathor said.

The assisting divinity knelt down to spread one of her cloths over the laboring woman's knees, then sat back on her heels. Rekemheb appeared at Auset's side and placed a gold cup before her lips.

She drank in large gulps, then wiped her mouth with her hand. Her head rolled slightly as the liquid took effect, and her speech slurred.

"Mmm." She licked her lips. "Is this the same stuff they clean the oor with?"

Yussif looked over at the goddess. "What about the bullet? The doctor said-"

Hathor raised her hand gently. "Put your mind at ease, Yussif. The gods of Egypt look after her now."

"Gods of Egypt, yes." He glanced around at the animal heads in conversation in the vestibule and then at the sanctuary walls covered with their images.

Seeing where his eyes went, the Ka of Rekemheb reached out to him and pulled him to his feet. "Come," the spectre said, turning his back, and strode before him out of the chamber.

Hesitant at rst, Yussif sidled past the divinities at the door and then, relenting, let himself be led along the eastern corridor. As man and ghost turned the last corner to the foot of a long staircase, they stood in darkness but for the gray-green iridescence of the Ka himself.

Rekemheb stepped up on the rst step and took hold of Yussif's right hand. "Read, and you will know us." He placed the Arab's palm against the staircase wall.

Under his ngers Yussif felt the outline of a face, the last of a long procession leading up the stairwell. "Ah," he said, as he recognized the being, not just the name-hieroglyph that burned in the darkness * 257 *

through his ngers, but its very essence as god and beast.

"Read," the priest repeated. "And by this touch you will know them." Then, gently tugging, himself walking backward, the Ka drew the man up the dark stairwell.

Yussif followed, sightless, step by step, his ngertips dancing over eyes and horns and beaks carved along the wall, and each god image drew him in. He swam through a kaleidoscope of minds that changed at each new step, and each one in a different way revealed the world to him. He looked down upon it from a barren crag, saw up to it from a moist burrow, recognized it from underwater, from the swamp, and from the searing sand. He heard the night wind breathing over sand dunes, the dung beetle clicking between the rocks, the raven's croak, the shriek of the baboon. He felt each god-beast's appetite and sense and knew nurture, patience, cunning, rut, and ravening hunger.

Drunken with revelation, he found he had reached the top of the staircase, and he staggered out onto the temple roof. The full moon shone down on him so brightly that he cast a shadow. Before him on the walls more hieroglyphics called out to him: incantations, blessings, hymns of praise, all in a solemn, stately language. What texts he could not read by moonlight, he could detect with his ngers. He laid his hands on them with the same reverence as he had once held the Koran and felt their truth.

"Recite, Yussif," Rekemheb said, and Yussif nodded.

"'I have spoken no falsehood against men. I have not robbed or stolen. I have slain neither man nor woman. I have not impoverished my neighbors or deprived the orphan of his property. I have not taken grain or encroached on cultivated land. I have not driven animals from the green land or diverted the water in its season. I have not tampered with the Balance weight or required anyone to labor unjustly for me. I have not made hungry or to weep.'"

He found himself laughing, as he read, at how little was expected- and how much. There were no commandments, laws, or admonitions, only the af rmation of a decent life. Countless gods had to be revered and appeased, but the way to appease them, after paying tribute, was simply to live righteously.

He turned around and leaned against the wall, feeling the lines and ridges of the confessions on his back. How rich he was now, knowing these things. How full the earth, how sheltering the sky with moon and stars.

* 258 *

"Mak! Sothis! " The glowing Ka stood at the edge of the roof, his arm extended toward the horizon. "Mak," he repeated, and Yussif understood, "Behold."

Yes, there it was, at the rim of the predawn sky, like the call of a distant trumpet, the Dog Star, Sirius, the herald of the solar year.

"Dewa netchar! " Yussif responded joyfully, as if he had said it a thousand times before. It was the rst day of the new season, Opet Nefer Renepet, the opening of the good new year, and beneath their feet in the sanctuary a child was being born.

Euphoric, the convert descended the staircase to take his place in the nativity.

* 259 *

* 260 *

CHAPTER XXXVII:.

FOR UNTO US.

Hands pressed over her eyes, as if to block out the pain, Auset rocked from side to side, knocking over the empty beer cup.

Each contraction merged into the next one now, depleted muscles working automatically.

Panting, she seized hold of the two arms closest to her, of the Mother Goddess and of Rekemheb. She arched her back and moaned in a long exhalation through clenched teeth.

In the silence that followed, she suddenly heard a tiny bleating, a weak vibrating "Eeeeehhhh."

Meskhenet reached under the cloth with both hands. "Djed meddu!

The Child is here."

Yussif watched from a cautious distance. He could not see under the cloth and resolutely did not want to, but he could tell by the motion of the midwife's hands that she washed the infant with wine between its mother's feet. In a few moments Meskhenet wrapped the pinkish gray creature in a cloth and presented it to the exhausted mother. Auset kissed its damp head and rocked it gently as she passed the afterbirth.

When the visceral aspects of the birth seemed over, Yussif ventured close again and knelt again beside the new mother. He touched the back of his index nger to the infant's cheek and whispered, "Welcome."

"Welcome indeed, child of Rekemheb," a voice said from the doorway. Horus and Seth stepped apart, and the angular gure walked between them into the chamber. Yussif recognized the long narrow beak that curved downward from the small head.

"Jehuti," Hathor said. "You come at the right moment."

The Scribe-god came forward and knelt on one knee before the nativity. The two brothers behind him remained standing.

* 261 *

"The prophecy is ful lled," the Mother Goddess said, taking the baby from Auset's reluctant arms. Holding the head and narrow shoulders in one hand and its tiny bottom in the other, she rose from her stool. "Djed meddu. Behold the Child of the gods."

The newborn opened large dark eyes, and Rekemheb exclaimed, "Oh, how beautiful is his face!"

Seeming to sense its precarious position in midair, the baby inhaled deeply and emptied its lungs in a long vibrating wail.

Rekemheb exclaimed again, "How robust is his cry," and Horus murmured agreement.