The infant thrashed with tiny arms and legs, and the swaddling that had covered it fell back, exposing the tender torso.

Horus's hawk-eyes widened in shock. Jehuti stood up, his beak open. Seth snickered.

Hathor pivoted the tiny body around to see what problem there might be. "Oh," she said.

Seth stepped forward. "A girl child. Is this the best the gods can do?"

"Do not de le my temple with derision, Seth," Hathor snapped back. "You once were one of us."

The god retreated a pace. "Once, yes. But now?" He spat air.

"You are a sorry sight, the three of you, in this lthy, ruined temple. A forgotten goddess with her darling son and a scribbler who cannot even convince a mortal to tell his story." He turned to the Ibis face. "Where is your new Book, Jehuti?"

The Scribe-god blinked, but had no reply.

"His Book is here," a voice said. Bats uttered in the halls and all heads turned.

The two of them, dust covered, stood for a moment in the doorway like brother and sister. Derek once again wore the jeweled medallion, and Valerie stood with the Scribe's palette hanging from her shoulder.

Holding it to her hip like a weapon, she announced, "And I will tell his story."

Jehuti nodded and repeated the ancient question. "Of the rebirth of the year?"

"Of the rebirth of the gods," she ritually replied and held up a single page of handwritten text.

Beaming, Rekemheb left the side of the Mother Goddess and strode toward them. "Then lo, I am witness to these things: the Balance * 262 *

and the Book-"

"And the Child too." Derek touched him brie y on the shoulder and hurried past him. "Auset. Are you all right?" He stopped before her, where Hathor still held the infant.

"Yes, I'm ne, and the baby's ne. But the gods seem to have an...issue."

Hathor laid the tiny creature in his arms. "You have a daughter, and she is strong and beautiful, but..."

Derek looked down at the squirming bundle. "Ohh, she's perfect!"

He kissed the infant's forehead. "Look, Rekemheb. The next generation.

And you're here to witness it, just like in the prophecy."

"No," Seth shook his head, contemptuously. "The prophecy has failed. This child, this paltry knot of esh, is nothing to Aton, nothing to the gods. An irritant, merely." Then he seized the infant suddenly from Derek's arms and spun around.

Auset screamed "No!" Yussif sprang to his feet. Derek reached out uselessly with one arm. Seth ran a stride ahead of them toward the chamber door.

A dark form blocked his way.

The tattered black abaya still hung from her, and torn strips of it uttered in the air like feathers as she entered. Seth backed away.

Her shrouded head still drooped forward as she extended rag-hung arms. They lengthened grotesquely as she rose in height. The torn abaya and the dark ngertips became feathers and extended outward until powerful wings wafted along both temple walls. Then, above the ruf ing torso, the veil fell back, and the great terrifying head of the desert vulture looked out over the sanctuary.

Horus found his voice. "Mistress of the Desert, Protector of Pharaohs, Guardian of the Royal Blood, Ancient Mother of all Things, Nekhbet!"

"Nekhbet?" Valerie said softly. The woman who had twice kissed her, the woman she had fallen in love with and on whose behalf she had been killed was...

"The Vulture-goddess," Derek gasped behind her. "Wow. Sure didn't see that one coming."

"What kept you, sister?" Hathor looked up to the vulture head that towered over her and all the others.

"Complications," a woman's voice replied. But then the huge curved beak of the scavenger opened, and the Mistress of the Desert * 263 *

thundered, "Open the temple!"

The walls seemed to vibrate for a moment, and then, with the sound of cracking ice, all Dendara became as glass. Over the soft yellow ambience of the chamber, the night sky appeared with the sharp light of the full moon.

The goddess spoke again. "I call on every god that dwells in the Duat and in the Field of Reeds and in the Temples of Kemet." Her head swayed from side to side, addressing east and west. "All those whom this Child's advent shall rejoice, come hither and attend me."

The solemn cry seemed to echo as it faded.

The night gave back its silence. Somewhere in the temple the scarab beetle rolled its dung ball across a stone, and in the dark recesses of the corridors bat wings rustled again, waiting.

Finally it came, barely discernible at rst, then unmistakable, the thrumming of a distant multitude. Valerie and the other mortals drew together and watched, incredulous, as they came from the horizon.

In a long aurora borealis they snaked, in streams of luminescence, emptying the underworld. Majestically they curved rst northward and then to the south, then headlong toward the temple, as if the procession itself were the celebration. Slowly they neared, joyous and solemn, delaying revelation, till nally the mortal eye could make out their individual forms. Macabre and stunning, they were a bewildering demon host of half-humans, birds, felines, canines, rams, and nameless creatures; they sported horns, feathers, owers, moons, and spheres of heavenly light.

In proximity it was almost not to be endured, as in kaleidoscope they spiraled, forming rank after burning rank, an amphitheater of inconceivable color suspended over the soft gold of the sanctuary below.

Rekemheb was prostrate, and Valerie stood enthralled, naming the deities to herself as they came in overhead: "Anubis, Knum, Sekhmet, Ptah, Amun..." until she too was overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle and dropped to her knees. "This is all the Duat," she murmured. "These are the very forces of the earth."

The Vulture-goddess reached out winged arms toward Seth, who had not dared to move, and with slender hands emerging from the wings' middle joints, she took hold of the silent infant. From the center of the temple, the Mistress of the Desert rose up to meet the waiting host and hovered over them in the crackling air. Sable feathers curled * 264 *

around the child, sheltering her as in a cradle against the wind that blew between the worlds beneath her magni cent wings.

"Hail to you, gods of Egypt! I know you and I know your names!"

the vulture spoke, and the temple walls reverberated. "This is the hour.

And this is the Child who shall be under my wing. Greet her as your own, for her name is Nefer-renepet, the Beautiful Year."

Murmurs of wonderment rippled through the Host of the Duat. A child of the modern age, a girl child no less, and from the lineage of a mere priest. Yet the oldest of their number, the protector of all things royal, had proclaimed it: This was the Child, the Messenger. Agreement spread throughout the ranks. Then jubilation, at every pitch in the myriad mouths and beaks and maws, accumulated like a gathering storm in an unbroken crescendo, until their collective acclamation rumbled like rolling thunder across the African sky, "NE FER REN E PET. "

Crouching still on the oor of the temple under the spectacle, Auset reached out to touch Rekemheb. "All right. I get it. Your prophecy is ful lled. Now, please, let me have my baby back."

He took her hand in his. "She is the gods' child too, Auset, and she will need their care, for the governments will be upon her shoulder."

Auset fell silent. Drenched in the sweat of her labor and the heat of the sanctuary, she shivered.

* 265 *

* 266 *

CHAPTER XXXVIII:.

ATON RISING.

A faint line of color appeared on the horizon. A voice called from among the divine host, "The sky lightens!"

Jubilation ceased. Disorderly and amboyant, the gods broke ranks, fretting like guilty party guests about the hour, and rose up from the temple precinct. In twos and threes they streamed toward the horizon, the golden lines of them threading into the pink and orange that secreted from the east. Horus and Seth trailed after them, two long comets.

The Vulture-goddess descended to the sanctuary, and its walls opaqued behind her. Folded black wings metamorphosed to slender bronze arms, her coat of feathers to the familiar sheath dress of tomb portraits, and the appalling scavenger head to the face of the shepherd at the well. As woman, Nekhbet knelt down and placed the curiously unperturbed infant in her mother's arms. "The gods will watch over her.

See to her earthly welfare until she hears her calling."

Auset's eyes darted anxiously over the handsome head and shoulders of Nekhbet, as if fearing the vulture might reappear.

"Earthly welfare. Calling. Yes, of course." She wrapped another layer of swaddling around the infant's legs, her rm grip indicating that there would be no more baby-passing.

Nekhbet rose again, and as a woman she wafted from the sanctuary, glancing for an instant toward Valerie as she passed.

Derek knelt down over his daughter, who sucked with concentration on her st. "You have your god-name now, a great big one, but I'll call you Ne ." He touched her other hand with his pinky, and miniscule ngers encircled it. "What a baptism. You got a whole circus, a carnival, * 267 *

and a visit of the heavenly host, all in one. Isn't that wonderful, my kitten?"

"More like a Bosch painting." Holding her infant in one arm, Auset raised herself up with dif culty. "And they're all our new in-laws."

"Yes, Ne 's in-laws." Unperturbed, Derek pressed his lips against the top of his daughter's warm head. "My cricket has all kinds of ghosts looking after her. Just like our great-great-great-grandfather, Rekemheb."

Rekemheb knelt on one knee over the newest of his line and took her tiny feet in his hands. At his touch, the infant opened her eyes wide and her mouth formed an O as she squirmed, raising both sts. Then she yawned and stared dreamily at him. "She much resembles my daughter Merut-tot," the Ka said tenderly. "What will her worldly name be?"

"I...I don't know. That's up to Auset, I guess. I promise this child everything I can give her from my own country, but I'm not ready for fatherhood." He rubbed his cheek against the infant's damp hair.

Hathor sat down again on her golden stool and adjusted her skirt.

"No, you are not. In this, we seem to have miscalculated."

Derek looked pained. "I know what you're going to say. I abandoned Auset, didn't I, when I died for Valerie."

Auset looked up at him. "What? You died?"

Hathor continued. "The gods had not planned for mortal love. Its fevers led you astray from our prophecy, but it also brought us this good man." She raised her hand toward Yussif, who had sat in silent wonderment through the entire spectacle.

"Yussif Nabil, you have embraced the gods this last night of the old year, and your heart is full. Will you care for this woman and this child as man and father?"

"With all my heart." He looked tenderly toward the young mother.

"If she will have me."

Auset still frowned. "Derek was dead? Like Nekhbet? Has anyone else here been dead that I don't know about?"

"Everyone, actually," Valerie said. "Except you and Yussif. We'll explain all that later. I think."

Hathor held out her arms, encompassing the group. "Now, my dears, you must be gone from here. Strangers will arrive in my temple soon, touching everything, understanding nothing. Go home now, all of you, and begin this our New Year. We will be watchful."

* 268 *

Without ceremony, she evaporated. Rekemheb remained a moment longer, holding the golden stool. Then, grinning in unpriestly fashion, he wiggled his ngertips at his descendants and disappeared after her.

Auset looked at the empty space where the goddess had stood.

"Home. Right. Has anyone thought of how we're going to get there?" She took hold of Yussif's arm and struggled to her knees. "Oof.

Amazing how everything you do requires stomach muscles."

"Don't worry. You'll rest for a day in Luxor, and we can train to Cairo tomorrow." Valerie reached under Auset's right elbow, which was curved around the baby, and found herself inches away from the infant's face. Clear eyes stared up at her, and she could smell the buttery scent of its newborn skin. Valerie let her hand linger a moment on the tiny, warm foot. "Can you walk?"

Yussif took hold on the other side, and together they pulled Auset to her feet. She winced. "I think so."

The new family shuf ed toward the sanctuary doorway. Behind them, the dwarf reappeared and gathered up birthing cloths into the middle of the straw mat. He rolled it all together and, with the bundle curved over his shoulder, he waddled toward Valerie.

She smiled. "That was you in the Necropolis, wasn't it? I should have recognized you. Thank you, Bes, God of Birthing Women."

The panting dwarf reached out a plump st as if to give her something. Puzzled, Valerie held her own hand under it. The stubby ngers opened, and something tiny and hard dropped into her palm. The misshapen god turned around and waddled away through the doorway.

Valerie stared, perplexed at the strange dark pellet in her hand.

"Oh," she murmured, recognizing the lead slug from her own gun.

Chagrined, she put it in her pocket.

Alone in the sanctuary, she turned in a circle, as she had done in the tomb of Rekemheb, sweeping her eyes over the reliefs and inscriptions.

She had been right. They had spoken to her alone, telling the old story.

And now she was called to tell the new one.

She drew out the folded pages that she had tucked into her shirt and thought of Seth. Telling the old mythology anew was insane, he'd said, and he was right. It was folly to attempt to resurrect a dead religion.

But now she knew what had killed it.

She unfolded the paper and read the opening words to her manuscript: * 269 *

Everywhere before his burning eyes the beasts, the winds and waters, and the hills cried out. P itiless, the S un D isk r ose and smote them, rendering them dumb. A en Seth, iron-eyed guardian of the light, loosed his spear upon the v anquished. But lo, a humble priest stepped for ward, an amulet in his hand, and the spear blade shatter ed into spar ks upon it. Gathering the spar ks with the po wer of his br eath, he sucked them in-and spat them out again as words.