24 BonesChapter One

Twenty-five years ago:

Eight-year-old Taggart Quinn was about to be branded.

“Boy, take off your shirt.”

A fire burned in the center of the court of the convent of St. George. Embers popped and fizzled as a man in a brown robe twirled a metal rod, its tip buried in the orange heat. At the same time, he pumped a bellows with his foot, causing the coals to flare and darken. A pale-faced boy sat on a nearby step. His eyes lit with each thrust of the man’s leg. A red glow crept up the shaft of the branding iron.

“Taggart!” The man’s focus remained on the fire. “I said, take off your shirt.”

Taggart sat frozen.

The iron clanged on cobblestone, its tip protruding from the fire. Pearl-white flecks sparked where wood clung to its starred design. The man strode to the boy, wrenched his arm up and tore the shirt over his head. Tears streamed down Taggart’s cheeks. He writhed, but the man’s grip was too strong to break.

Sisters looked down from the convent windows, their veils obscuring any expression.

The man dragged the boy to the center of the courtyard where the brand lay. His chant was clipped, and the iron yellowed as it cooled.

“Taggart is one of your sons, born of Geb, earth.” As the man sifted dust over Taggart’s bare neck the words rumbled amongst the walls. Ancient rock and ancient gods bore witness. “Taggart anoints himself with that which you anoint yourselves.” Water dribbled from a wineskin onto Taggart’s shoulder. “He lives on that on which you live.” The man waited until Taggart drew a stifled breath of air.

Taggart twisted with new urgency. This was a baptism by the four natural elements. The final element of Taggart’s baptism remained: Fire.

The man picked up the brand and the walls of the fortress of Babylon garbled the chant.

* * * *

To the South of the Coptic fortress, neighboring Muslims eavesdropped from cracked concrete apartments. The kilns of potters baking urns and polychrome plates shouldered the Eastern fortifications, and the forges of the tinkers shouldered the Western battlements, their workshops ever ready to repair an unending stream of tools and wagon axles. To the North, within a vast necropolis of shadowy tombs, lay the dead.

Firelight flickered against the sandstone walls of the enclave of Coptic Cairo, a bright star in the dark. The light from the fire fell short of the domed Church of St. George, and the Hanging Church’s towers–the bosom of Coptic power. Narrow, cobbled alleys connected the Hanging Church to the churches of St. Barbara and, finally, to Abu Sarga. There in Abu Sarga, where Jesus had sheltered, pigeons cooed in the branches of the courtyard’s gnarled sycamore. Lamplight wavered in the window of a nearby apartment.

Leaning against the Sycamore, Elen smelled the jasmine in her daughter’s black hair. She listened to the muted chanting, and continued to trace the network of veins that ran up her daughter’s neck and cheek.

“Mommy,” Samiya twisted in Elen’s lap, “Why was I chosen?” It was not the first time she had asked, but both understood it would be the last.

“You know, daughter.” Observing Samiya’s pleading stare, Elen sighed. “In the beginning, the god Re, god of the Sun, rose from the Benben stone, surrounded by the primordial waters of Nu.” Samiya smiled, and snuggled into her mother’s breast. “Upon the stone rested the Temple of the Phoenix where every five hundred years the Phoenix must return for rebirth. You will see that Phoenix, Samiya.”

“And you, too,” Samiya said.

Elen looked away. “Perhaps,” she murmured. “At the Temple, Re spat out eight Gods to form the Ennead and then took human form as the first Pharaoh. Re ruled well but, in time, he aged–man thought Re enfeebled and disobeyed his law. And so, Re sent destruction upon man in the form of his daughter, Sekhmet. The fiercest of all goddesses, she took the shape of a lion. She delighted in slaughter and bloodshed and killed all who had disobeyed her father.”

“Why would Re hurt us?” Samiya asked.

“Everything has a balance, Samiya. Sekhmet is merely an extension of Re, the evil which keeps Him pure.” Her mother’s smile thinned even as she brushed out her daughter’s long tresses and continued. “But when Re looked down upon Sekhmet and over the land and saw the vengeance she had meted, he did not rejoice. And she persisted in slaying the people despite his command to stop.”

Samiya peered into the courtyard shadows as if Sekhmet might still be skulking.

“Re summoned his men and brewed seven thousand jars of beer.” Samiya’s eyes glistened. “Then they brought red ochre to the Temple and combined it with the beer until a scarlet pool formed. The next day, Sekhmet lapped at the pool, thinking it blood. She drank the sleeping draught and never killed another man. This is a story of good, evil, and balance.”

With her lips pursed Samiya searched her mother’s sharp green eyes.

“Without evil there can be no good, Samiya,” Elen said. “You are a counterbalance, a chaos without which there is no order.”

“But I’ll do bad things,” Samiya said.

“Was Sekhmet bad? No.” Her mother’s eyes hardened. “She fulfilled her destiny, as you must. Her fault was in not understanding the need for balance. Your only honor to me is to consider the balance in your actions.”

“Okay, Mommy.” Samiya’s voice lowered. “And that means I have to leave?”

Elen’s eyes watered as she swallowed. “Soon,” she whispered. “Say your goodbyes to Thomas.”

Samiya fought tears and hauled herself from the comfort of her mother’s lap. She ducked under a drooping clothesline and pulled open the apartment door. In the foyer, Thomas stood on a chair and stared at a light socket. He grinned when he noticed her.

“Want to see?” he signed, his fingers deftly plucking words from the air. She nodded. “You are sad.” Samiya looked down. Thomas crouched on the seat of the chair and lifted her chin. Her lip quivered when she met his blue eyes. “I am sad, too,” he gestured. “But there is something important I want to explain.”

A tear breached the rim of her eyelid.

“Think of the entire world as needing three wires.” Thomas straightened and pointed at the colorful jumble within the steel box. “This wire is the Fullness.” A red wire rolled between his slender fingers. “This is the Void.” Now he fingered a black wire. “And this is the ground wire.” The third wire was a naked copper snake.

“What is it for?” Samiya asked, looking at the copper thread.

Thomas’s normally jocular face was serious. “That is your special wire, Sam. Before you touch the Void, always ground this wire. It will keep you safe, and we will not lose you. Understand?”

Samiya nodded. “What about the red wire, the Fullness?”

“No.” Thomas’s fingers snapped. “Yours is the Void–the ground wire and the Void. Do not be ashamed of representing evil.” He stared at her for a long time. Her face crumpled in fear and confusion. “Promise?” Thomas’s lopsided grin sprouted, and he ruffled Samiya’s hair, but she could not right her down-turned mouth.

She choked on a thick sob. “The ground wire and the Void,” she signed.

“Good girl.” Thomas’s laugh sounded surreal, perpetually bracketed as it was by silence. “Now stop talking, I need both hands, you know.”

Samiya returned to the courtyard where tears coursed down her mother’s cheeks. Samiya’s sadness welled, and she tucked her chin to her chest as she shuffled out of the twin-studded doors. Once in the alley, she leaned against the wall and wept. A rat regarded her with yellow eyes as it gnawed a chicken bone in the street’s open sewer. She sidled past and stumbled with bleary vision to a junction. Her last night as a Sun-Dweller and the moon failed to quench her thirst for light. A glow spilled from a crack in the convent’s gate. Wood smoke overwhelmed the sewer’s rot. She ran the sleeve of her tunic across her face and crept to the door.

Sisters leaned from the windows of St. George’s Convent, veils twisting in the breeze. Below their perches a bonfire burned, lighting a boy’s pallid face and the hooded man. Samiya shrank from the Sisters’ gaze.

“I don’t want to be Shemsu Hor,” the boy screamed.

Samiya’s chest swelled. The Shemsu Hor touched the Fullness, not Void; Companions lived in light, not darkness.

Samiya stepped through the gate. “I will, sir. I would be a Companion,” she blurted.

From under the hood, the man’s gaze rested briefly upon her. Then he lifted the brand. The boy struggled. The man’s jaw set, disappointment in the boy plain. He recited the final words.

“May you give Taggart those possessions which your father, Re, gave you.”

The brand came down. Taggart’s back arched, and he threw his shoulder forward as the brand landed. He screamed. The man removed the brand and Taggart slunk, whimpering, into the deep shadow of the courtyard wall beneath a shrine to St. George. The man pursued. Taggart gripped his shoulder where the brand had seared. The man removed Taggart’s hand, prying, gently now, his need having cooled like the blackened brand. Upon seeing the sigil, he groaned and knelt. Sorrow etched his face.

Samiya retreated into darkness. All alleys and choices led further into shadow. Through her tear-blurred sight she did not see her mother, and they collided. Samiya fell, crying out, splayed on her back in the sewer muck.

Elen stood over her, chiseled from marble in the moon’s glow. “Samiya, follow me.” She did not bend to lift her daughter to her feet. No one would bend for her daughter in the days ahead.

“But … my things.” Samiya protested.

“Bring nothing.”

Samiya had packed her dolls, a favorite dress–certainly, she could not go in her tunic and shorts, now dirtied with sludge. The corners of her mouth curved down, and her eyes narrowed to slits. All she had was Thomas’s wire.

“Follow,” Elen repeated and walked slowly down the alley, leading Samiya past the convent’s shut gate. Samiya trailed behind. Under the door that led into the streets of Cairo, she groped for her mother’s hand.

* * * *

The brown-robed man stood with his shoulders sloped before the Mother of the Sisters of Isis. She smiled, face plump and wrinkled like an old grape. Layers of shadow deepened the chamber. At her back, scorpions skittered in a parched aquarium.

“Did you really believe you could burn away Taggart’s destiny?” she asked.

“You drove me to this, Sister.” He shook.

“Mother, now, son.” She chuckled.

“In a quarter of a century, a Prophet must be ready. This is not like Cuauhtémoc’s rebirth. The world’s spirit has weakened.”

“And would Cuauhtémoc have preferred to remain unfound, rather than face his Conquistador torturers?”

“One man’s sacrifice for five hundred years of Balance,” the man said. “It is an easy trade.”

“What do I care, Companion?” Her eyes sparked. “What if the Prophet does not return?”

“Void will reign, and the earth will suffer five hundred years of chaos. The Balance must–”

“Balance.” She spat. “The Sisters of Isis do not share in the Balance.”

“You are Keepers of the Codex–”

She laughed. “And we would trade you the contents of the Codex if you would connect us with the power of the Fullness.”

He snorted, but her gaze held his. “You would not …” He began.

“The Shemsu Hor leave us with little choice. You draw strength from the Fullness. We would trade knowledge for that right.”

“But it is your duty to bring the Codex at the appointed time,” he said.

She lifted a bony finger. “That duty was agreed to by a Sisterhood stripped of its strength. A duty forced upon them by the brotherhood twenty-five hundred years ago. Our hands are barren of power.” She showed her empty, veined palms. “You and the Shemsu Seth–”

“Seth,” he gasped. “Witch, you make this offer to the Shemsu Seth—those animals of the Void?” He strode to within inches of her face, fists clenched.

“As you say, we must have Balance.”

“Then we refuse. The Shemsu Hor refuse,” he spluttered.

She bared yellowed teeth and wiped at her cheek. “So be it.” She shrugged. “You refuse.”

The Mother of the Sisters of Isis turned to attend her scorpions, their scarlet carapaces black as dried blood in the darkness.

“Be careful with whom you deal, Mother.”

“The Void strengthens even as your Fullness crumbles, Companion.”

“The boy is not your personal Jesus.” His robe billowed as he whirled and strode from the room.

“Isn’t he?” the Mother said when the echo of his steps had faded.

The shadows chuckled.

“We take the boy tonight,” the Mother spoke to them. “The girl is being delivered as we speak.”

“The Fullness and the Void,” a voice hissed.

“Patience, daughters. In time we will rise–go now.” The shadows shifted and figures draped in black followed the Companion.

The Mother drew a locust from a wire cage, fingertips pinching the forewing as its six legs scrabbled. It dropped onto the sand. The scorpions began to hunt.

* * * *

Samiya and her mother hesitated at the mouth of the alley of mausoleums. Samiya tried to make sense of the black on black shapes dusted with moonlight as the wrought-iron gate groaned open. Until tonight, the City of the Dead had been forbidden, its lanes home to more than the dead. She feared it and looked up to her mother for assurance, but Elen did not meet her gaze. A dwarf with only whites for eyes stepped into the moonlight from which he seemed to shrink. He whistled strange sounds as he approached.

A horse and cart, piled high with the day’s refuse, clattered over rock. The dwarf tensed and cocked an ear. Shadows flitted amongst the crypts. Samiya hugged her mother’s waist.

“The Spine,” the dwarf demanded of Elen and proffered thick calloused hands, the fingers tipped with brown, curled nails.

“The location of the first vertebra, Shemsu Seth,” Elen agreed and provided a slim scroll.

“And the girl.” The dwarf’s head panned. Samiya shied behind her mother.

Elen pushed her daughter forward. The dwarf’s rough hand clasped her wrist, and Samiya whimpered. The dwarf nodded satisfaction and turned.

“I love you, daughter,” Elen called out as the dwarf dragged Samiya into the necropolis. “It is for the Balance.” The iron gate swung shut between them.

“Mommy,” Samiya whined, wrenched forward by the dwarf. The gate clanged. “Mommy!”

Two hairless Doberman trotted beside them. Samiya twisted to catch a glimpse of her mother, to wave, to promise she would remember the Balance.

But Elen was already running away.


New Moon


Chapter Two

Present day–Cairo:

“I want the Codex, Elen.” Sam pointed at her mother, the accusing finger tipped with a razor-sharp nail. Her other hand gripped a hound’s leash, and she heeled the dog to her flank when it threatened to lunge.

A second hairless dog straddled her mother and dribbled drool across Elen’s cheek and lips. Elen twisted her head away from the hound’s hot panting, her well-lined brow furrowed with practiced concentration.

Sam knew her jackal mask and assumed Arabic accent had not concealed her identity. She trembled at the look etched on her mother’s face. Pharaoh, the leader of the Shemsu Seth, had honored Sam with the task of retrieving the Codex. Sam thumbed the heavy gold ring on her finger, reminding herself of her goal. Her sentiment was a barrier to her mission’s success. She coiled her rage inward.

“Where’s the fucking Codex!”

Elen flinched, and then kicked the hound as she jumped upright. With a yelp, the dog slipped from the bed and curled underneath.

Sam’s canine headdress obscured her peripheral vision, but it prevented her mother from seeing her face, the sweat on her brow, the strain about her green eyes. Sam’s emotions, like the veins criss-crossing her dusky neck and cheek, ran too near the surface.

The window framed Elen’s thickened body, the light shining through her thin cotton nightgown. On the street outside, riotous cheers clamored. A procession wound through the alleys of Coptic Cairo.

The hound under the bed barked. Elen tossed back the mattress and snatched the dagger lying on the bed’s wire frame. She stabbed between the wires at the hound hunkered below until its howls died.

Sam knew she should kill Elen, set the other dog onto her back and cut her throat. Sam’s knuckles were bone-white. Her mother turned. Blood from the blade dripped onto the scorpion hilt and her fist. She blinked away angry tears and glared.

“Get out, Samiya.” Her lips barely moved. “The Codex isn’t here.”

“Where,” Sam insisted and let the dog take a foot of leash. Its front paws scratched at the air as the black iron collar dug into its scruff. Elen waggled the dagger in the direction of the hound like a master readying to toss a stick. Sam had expected repentance, that age would have stripped her mother of stature. Sam shook her head and whistled to the men she led.

“Bring him in,” Sam called, watching her mother carefully from beneath the mask. The old woman’s eyes flicked from Sam to the door and back.

Two figures entered the room, each wrapped in black robes with deep cowls. From beneath the hoods poked the masks of a falcon’s beak and a baboon’s muzzle. Between them, they dragged Thomas, his silver-haired head bowed. The masked men dropped him to the floor. He groaned when he landed.

A squat dwarf followed the men. He restrained another red-eyed hound that slunk ahead of him into the room. The dog rose to the dwarf’s broad shoulder, its eyes glowing with a whisper of Void and its hide rippling with muscle. The dwarf’s smile, nearly buried by his beard, vanished when his gaze fell on the dead hound. Whistle-like hisses shot from his lips. The dog settled to sniff at the prostrate man’s buttocks.

“Where’s the Codex?” Sam repeated, her threat made potent by the quietness of her speech. Elen looked from the dogs to Sam’s jackal mask and gritted her teeth. Sam spun and kicked Thomas. Ribs cracked. He cried out, rolling onto his back.

Elen flung the blade. Sam’s forearm caught it and deflected it to the stone wall. The dagger clanged to the floor. Sam smiled at her mother’s reaction. She did feel emotion, just not love for her daughter. That made her next task easier.

Sam concentrated as she reached into the chaotic energy of the Void. The primal well brimmed with dark energy, so near, so easily drawn. Filled with the Void’s rage, she raised her arms above her head. Tendrils of blue-black lightning crackled between outstretched fingertips. Her mother stumbled backward, falling onto the bed frame. Mouth agape, her eyes reflected the snaking Void. Sam’s hands lowered as she bent toward Thomas.

“Stop!” Elen screamed.

The plea crashed upon the dispassionate Void. Worms of energy arced across Thomas’s back. Sam shook, her teeth clacking together with each shock. The old man convulsed. The room stank of ozone.

“How could you?” Her mother’s chest heaved, and her lips trembled.

Sam released the Void.

Stooping to retrieve the dagger, Sam drew a deep breath. “The Codex.”

Her mother remained silent. Sam loomed above Thomas and placed her foot on his neck.

Elen’s eyes shut. “I don’t have it.” Her tone appealed. Thomas gurgled as Sam applied pressure.

He signed with his hands and fingers. “Say nothing, Elen. This is no longer your daughter.”

“I will kill him.” Sam gestured in reply. She leaned further. His fingers clawed with pain.

Elen’s hand slashed, “Stop!” Creases radiated from her tear-filled eyes. “It’s gone, but we have a copy,” she gasped.

Sam didn’t smile. Her mission was unsuccessful, and she had lost a hound. Its death required blood sacrifice. Elen indicated a rectangular box. On the lid were a series of squares, some of which were marked with hieroglyphs, while others were blank. It was the game ‘Senet,’ an ancient Egyptian precursor to Backgammon. Sam had a dim recollection of playing it. Her good memories were all dim.

She snatched the box from the dressor and snapped back the lid. She found not white and black game-chips, but a sheaf of parchment. The scroll crackled as it unfurled. A poor rubbing from the original, the hieroglyphs were distorted. She rolled the paper and banged the box shut with her fist.

“Where is the gold?”

For the dog’s death, the dwarf expected a sacrifice, and his eyes glinted. Sam looked from Thomas to Elen. Once more, her mother was expressionless.

Sam bent back over Thomas who wheezed where he sat on the floor, clutching his side. With the hilt of the dagger Sam struck him on the temple, and he thumped to the stone. Elen lunged, but the masked men caught her and held her by her armpits. The dwarf grinned.

Sam opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Signing three quick movements, she accented them sharply. “Forgive me, I must.”

The tip of the blade traced across Thomas’s chest and hovered over his heart. Sam’s vision blurred with tears. Elen writhed in the grip of the men.

“May Seth, God of Chaos, accept this sacrifice,” Sam said.

She drove the blade downward until it scored rock.

Elen choked for air as Thomas shook in spasm. They both fell limp. Sam knelt beside the corpse. Energy coursed from her fingertips to her spine. Thomas’s murder expanded her access to the Void. The charge raced, permeating each cell of her bones, muscles, and blood, arcing ageless and gnarled. Each caress of the Void changed something, took something, replaced something.

Elen sobbed. Sam motioned for the men to drag her mother from the room. As she passed, Sam struck Elen’s head against the wall. Sam stopped her tears, stood, and took a deep breath before she, too, strode from the bedroom.

“Place her in the bier,” Sam ordered the men. Two long handles protruded from each end of the white-draped, rectangular litter squatting in the centre of the living room. The men turned up its curtain and revealed a bed of gold and silver stitched pillows.

Sam couldn’t know if the Codex rubbing was authentic, but she could take her mother with her and keep their link to the Codex intact. It was the only excuse Sam could find not to kill her.

Sam studied the surroundings. The living room had not changed in a quarter century: pale green couches draped in embroidered fabric, books, everywhere books, candles and blown glass vases. Unconscious, Elen slipped from the litter’s plush confines, and her head hit the floor. Sam winced.

Tucked into the corner of a shelf was a small case, leather with brass clasps and stickers of flowers and fish. She squinted at it, and then jerked it from the shelf. When she opened the case, a strangled moan escaped her lips. It was the bag she had packed before her delivery to the Shemsu Seth. The lid whumped shut on the dolls and dresses of her childhood. One of her doll’s legs, a ragged favorite, stuck out of the suitcase seam. Her mother had been right; she had needed none of it. Or perhaps her mother had needed it more than she.

Sam backed away and then spied a computer tower wedged between two bookcases. She tossed it in with her mother. Its files would be scoured for the Codex’s translation and potential location. Sam’s hands left red sticky fingerprints on the casing. Her stomach rolled at the sight of Thomas’s blood. The tiny kitchen, complete with miniature stove and fridge, held no Codex, nor did Thomas’s closet-sized room. Sam whistled to the sentry.

Another robed man entered and stood at one corner of the bier. After lifting the body of the dead hound inside, the dwarf dashed aboard with his dogs.

“No,” Sam demanded, her voice cracking. “Leave one dog here.” The dwarf whistled, and a hound jumped from the bier, crouching when it landed, ready to leap again.

With the curtains of the bier drawn, Sam and the men each hefted a corner and shuffled out into the courtyard.

Moonlight filtered through the sycamore branches. A carving of St. George mounted on an Arabian horse and spearing a dragon hung above the yard’s iron-studded door. They exited onto the streets and caught the tail of the procession. At this late hour, the parade had slowed, but remained festive still, in celebration of some saint Sam could not recall.

She whooped as they joined the end of the train that snaked its way past the Coptic fortress of Babylon and the Convent of St. George. The Coptic revelers took up her cheer. Sam stumbled, awkward on the uneven cobblestone as they jostled amongst the partygoers, threading through the streets until they breached the walls. The procession continued into the next neighborhood, but Sam’s entourage slipped from the rear and turned toward the tombs.

As they entered the City of the Dead, she nodded to a man who lurked in the shadow of the gates. The bier’s handle chafed, and she switched shoulders for the tenth time.

They turned down a thoroughfare lined with windowless mausoleums. Family names rather than street numbers were inscribed on marble, granite, and limestone façades. Eyes stared from the safety of their sanctuaries. A propane lamp’s hiss was silenced. Sam struggled to her full height, her chin high.

When they stopped in front of a large marble mastaba they put down the bier. The dwarf and his dog scrambled out and clambered around the sidewall, disappearing into a neighboring sandstone crypt, one of the many entrances to an underworld that stretched from the City of the Dead to the suburb of Heliopolis and the pyramids of Giza. Other dwarves would return to take care of the hound corpse.

The baboon and hawk masked men slipped Elen’s arms around their necks. She seemed smaller, but Sam felt no satisfaction in the change. She was glad she had been given this task; any other Shemsu Seth would have killed Elen. But as they entered the arched entry of the crypt, unease twisted Sam’s stomach.

She watched Elen–her mother–descend ahead of her into darkness.


Chapter Three

Present day–Toronto:

“You’re on contract, Quinn.” Dean Oswald’s eyes, visible over the same kind of wire-rimmed spectacles worn by the four oil-painted deans flanking him, were unblinking. “A one-year contract, not tenure track, and plenty of others are available to take your place.” The dean looked away and spun an antique globe as if the world were indeed at his fingertips. Taggart Quinn’s face reddened.

“We require our professors to be objective in their discussions of all religions.” The dean lifted a sheet of paper and read, “Professor Quinn then explained that a good proportion of Christians think humanity burst upon this world in 4,004 B.C., he called this belief laughable.” The dean raised his eyes to Quinn’s. “The student continues at length. Did you really devote half a lecture to detailing how the Christian fable of Mary and Jesus is derivative of Isis and Horus? Your student explains his own obvious bias, but–”

“The kid is a fundamentalist streaming in Comparative Religions,” Taggart interrupted, shaking his head; he could guess which student had squealed. “Damn bible-thumper.”

“This is my point, Quinn. You can’t hack at people’s beliefs or call them names. You need to present a balanced, non-inflammatory view to your students, no matter your feelings or,” he paused, “your history.”

Taggart sniffed. The dean had no idea of his “history.” His very birth was a blasphemy, his American mother a postulant to the Coptic Church, and his Egyptian father part of an ancient cult. After he’d refused to join the cult of the Shemsu Hor, his grandmother had enrolled him in a Catholic boarding school run by priests. Strict discipline had included the cane, exercise until he was sick, and hours spent kneeling in prayer on hard corn kernels. He grimaced at the memories and tried to focus on the dean’s complaint.

“We are a balanced school and can afford to sit on both sides of the fence. But these criticisms do us no good. Given your lack of published research, the administration won’t allow me to offer you a tenure track, and frankly, considering your inability to provide a balanced view, I wouldn’t recommend one.” The dean leaned back in the leather chair. Colors from the the stained glass window at his back decorated his domed head.

Taggart’s hands balled into fists. “I don’t have many papers published because the academic world of religious scholars is made up of conservatives to whom I am a threat.”

The dean leaned forward again. “Sometimes we must follow a middle path to achieve our goals, no matter how we must hold our nose.”

It was the sixth such complaint against Taggart in three years of teaching. The complaints were to be expected considering his Ph.D. had taken two tries. His first dissertation had been rejected for its tone and insubstantial source materials to support his thesis: Coptic Christianity’s Failure to Defend the Truth. This was just more of the same. He nodded sourly as he left the dean’s office.

Two hours later as he walked up his apartment path, he nodded again but it was in agreement with his own thoughts rather than the dean.

“Asshole,” he mumbled, his steps punishing the flagstone. “Miranda was right. The world needs more Indiana-Jones-style academia.” He chuckled at the paradox. The thought of Miranda lent a spring to his step. Tulips and daffodils spotted the gardens beside the wrought iron fence of his apartment building. The scent of freshly turned soil filled the air. His was apartment nine of ten, each accessible from the exterior of the two-story, gray-brick building. The brown grape vines clinging to its walls had yet to bud.

“The dean is just protecting his pension, counting the years before his retirement with his best work behind him. Jesus is a stolen myth.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “The world in the last decade has moved from secular to fundamentalist. A complete reversal.” He shook his head unhappily. “A devolution of spiritual thought. Spirituality lies beyond the religious texts, not in them.”

He stomped up his apartment’s three-stair entry and tossed his bag on the bed to the right, flopping on the couch to the left. He shoved his work issues from his mind and looked up, letting the blank plaster ceiling slowly become a fresco of Miranda.

Miranda had taken his introductory course, W101, Introduction to World Religions, which was required for a Comparative Religions degree. She was an ‘A’ student. They had met in his class, but to his disappointment she had streamed into Archaeology. He seldom discovered a match for his keen mind. The fact that she was pretty and young was something of a hindrance, rather than a boon. Taggart was under no illusion that he was her physical equal, and he knew how their conversations might be perceived by his would-be colleagues.

He frowned. Would she actually enjoy frying her coffee-cream complexion in the desert sun while she scraped layer by painstaking layer to unearth shards of old dishes? She had drunk ancient languages like a child learning her mother tongue. Sweat beaded Taggart’s forehead despite the spring air. Tonight, out of school hours, out of his office hours, he had a date with her. The guidelines of student-teacher fraternization were clear. But ‘fraternization’ was the wrong word–nothing brotherly here–even if it was to play Senet.

His outer door creaked as the mailman delivered the mail. With a grunt, the man pushed papers through the slot, and let the door whack shut.

Taggart peeked over the couch. The daily mail consisted of the usual: Flyers detailing the ‘New Price’ of local residential listings, the sale at Sears, and the cost of a medium pizza with cheese. His stomach grumbled. Against the bottom stair leaned a phone bill, which he had not yet set up for online payment. He stomped down the steps and picked up the flyer for cheap pizza. The mail was his method of determining what was for dinner. On Sundays, when mail halted and he couldn’t depend on mass-market inspiration, he ate leftovers for breakfast and pub and street food for lunch and dinner.

When he held the flyer to the light that filtered through the small windowpane of his front door, he noted that the outside screendoor had not fully closed. He opened the door. A crate blocked the screen. ‘Fragile’ and ‘Airmail’ stickers were pasted across the package sides. He checked to ensure the address was correct. Taggart Quinn–with a return address to Cairo, Egypt, the country of origin. Airmail, from Egypt. He whistled.

He had remained in irregular touch with five people in Egypt: a couple of relatives, a couple of academics, and the Pope. Not the big Pope, of course, but Taggart liked telling people he knew the Pope, even if it was the Coptic Christian Pope. He hadn’t heard from any of them for years, except for the occasional book from his Holiness. Then, a week ago, a woman by the name of Elen Rush had sent him a cryptic email:

To: Professor Quinn

From: Elen Rush

Re: The Codex

Professor Quinn, there are few I feel comfortable informing, but for my safety, I must tell as many as I may.

I have the Tablet of Destiny. I am certain. This places me in great danger. The Shemsu Seth will want it.

Heed the call of Re, Companion.

Although he had joked with Miranda about the sanity of the woman, the last line had brought shivers. Heed the call of Re, the Egyptian God of the Sun. His grandmother and father had demanded no less of him. Taggart recalled his father’s blazing dark eyes and grimly set jaw. The night of Taggart’s branding, his induction into the Shemsu Hor, had been the last night he had seen his father. The man was later found poisoned by his own hand.

Now, years later, old guilt darkened Taggart’s mood like rust. He rubbed at his shoulder before crouching to lift the heavy crate, thick muscles bunching under a layer of fat. The box thudded on his living room floor and pressed into carpeting ivory-colored from dirt.

Taggart drew a penknife from his pocket and sawed at the boxboard. Frustrated with the slow progress, he stabbed a series of perforations that he pulled at as he worked. Soon he had an opening large enough for his hand. Reaching inside, he pulled out a mess of styro-peanuts and felt the smooth cool surface of a book beneath. One after the other came through the hole. The books he extracted confirmed his suspicions. The Pope was sending him the latest on Coptic Christianity and the history of the ascetic sects of the desert. Coptic Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs, and Fathers of the Desert, read the titles of the first two books.

“Why the Pope can’t order from Amazon.” He shook his head. The books bounced on his paisley print couch, and he reached inside again, feeling even more books. His stomach grumbled, and he abandoned the box to order pizza. During his shower, meal and nap, the box remained untouched.

* * * *

At nine p.m., the café randomly selected funk and downtempo tracks. The owner had cracked a few beers behind the counter, and Taggart had lined up his third glass of Jetfuel. The shaking of his hand accompanied the heavy beat.

Despite the crisp air, Miranda’s flat stomach was bare and the waistline of her jeans slid below her hips. Taggart coughed into his fist when she entered. Her hips swayed. Air whistled from his lungs. Tenure just couldn’t compete. When he stood to greet her, he knocked pieces from the game board and jostled the empty glasses.

Miranda stared at the game, and her fingers traced where the shifted game chips exposed hieroglyphs.

“The sign for Water,” she said and caressed three parallel squiggles burned into one cream square. “Beauty. And, Happiness, or is it Good Fortune?” She placed her finger to her chin.

It was her sensual intellect that activated Taggart’s primal heart, warred with his cerebellum, and whipped it like a skinny kid at the beach.

“I know for sure this is the symbol for Re, the Sun,” she concluded.

Taggart knew the meanings of the game’s hieroglyphs, too, and her interpretations were debatable, but he wasn’t looking at the inscriptions.

“Good Fortune … it’s the symbol for Good Fortune,” he said, swept into the depths of her blue eyes, blue like his own, but there the facial similarities ended. His cheeks were full and mottled, eyes hooded rather than bright. His once strong jaw had faded. He studied the incline of her cheekbones and the large eyes set below lean pyramidal eyebrows. He nodded, as his stare approached the ‘too long’ mark.

“Cool,” he said.

She sighed, sat down across from him, and checked out some guy clicking his pen. He returned her perusal and then buried his head in his notes.

“This is Senet. The word Senet means ‘to pass,’” Taggart explained, “And most of the games were found in tombs, so it is likely some representation either of the afterlife or of a journey through it.”

She stared at the ebony board, its three rows of ten squares made of inlaid ivory.

“Is this from a tomb?”

Taggart winked.

“You can’t keep this,” she said, pushing back her chair.

He shook his head. “I’m kidding. The ivory is real, and it could never be made now, at least not in Canada, but it’s only a hundred years old, not five thousand.”

Her lips quirked at the corner of her mouth.

“I hear you’re now the head of the archery club, Professor.”

Taggart shrugged. Archery tended to be somewhere between fencing and computer chess on most people’s coolness scale. The nearby man looked up from his papers and clicked his pen again.

“You can call me Tagg outside of university if you like.”

Her smile turned coy, and she brushed a tress of blonde-streaked black hair behind her ear. Taggart bit his lip. The older professor seducing the student was certainly a fantasy, but a chasm lay between fantasy and reality. Besides, he sensed a game here, not necessarily malicious, but he did not relish being toyed with.

Taggart explained the rules of Senet, using a die as the counter instead of sticks as the Egyptians had. She beat him six out of the ten games, the last of which he lost fairly. The café owner, red-faced from alcohol, grumbled that it was getting late and halted the beat of the computer’s musical loop. The pen clicker was gone.

“Shit,” Taggart said as he checked his watch, “you’ll have to run to catch the subway.”

“I’ve had so much coffee, I’m not sure I can sleep anyway,” Miranda said, glancing at him and then inspecting her nails.

He struggled to slow his heart. “We could go for a walk?” he offered. Taggart had no plans that couldn’t be left to congeal and refry later.

“You live nearby?” She tapped her nails against the table.

He nodded.

“What about a drink?”

Taggart’s eyes widened. “Well, sure, okay, why not?” He looked around as if hoping for someone to rescue him, to say, nice try professor. But the proprietor only shifted from foot to foot as they left.

Miranda shivered in the night air, and he started to put his arm around her and then stopped, letting her wrap her own goose-pimpled arms about her torso.

In the middle of Winchester Street’s cracked blacktop, a homeless man stumbled circuitously. Townhomes lined the road like trees. He walked her briskly past neighboring rooming houses and pointed out the private residence of the last Governor General, Cabbagetown’s most famous tenant, whose courtyard his own micro-balcony overlooked. He opened the door to his apartment and waved her inside.

“Very cozy,” she commented at the disparaging shrug that he gave his bachelor apartment.

“Thanks. Well, I can offer wine, and water.” He walked into the kitchen, and she settled onto the couch.

“Hmm … if you have a bottle of red.” The couch springs groaned and then rebounded. “What’s that?” she called.

“Just a box of books.” He took a full bottle from a tattletale row of empties.

“No–the maps are wrong.”

He stuck his head around the corner from the kitchen while he drilled an opener into a fragmenting cork. Miranda stared at replicas of Mercator’s World Maps hung upon the wall.

“Mercator’s earliest, on the left, drawn in 1538, is closer to reality than you might think.”

“But Antarctica wasn’t discovered until the 1800’s,” she protested.

“Not by the Europeans until 1818, no.”

“Why do you have these on the wall?”

“It’s a reminder to question everything.”

“What do you mean?”

Taggart stepped from the kitchen, still struggling with the now rapidly disintegrating cork. “In 1538 it wasn’t known how to determine longitude.” He paused, but she just stared at him with wide eyes, tongue resting on her upper lip. She was smarter than this. “How would a 16th century cartographer know what Antarctica would look like at all, let alone with any degree of accuracy? Why did he then draw a map in 1569 less accurate than his first?” Taggart looked from his Ph.D., prominently hung, to the wine, then to Miranda’s smooth cheeks. The reflection in his leaded window twisted his mouth wolfishly. He shuddered and concentrated, the man in the window a Mr. Hyde he needed to curb tonight.

“I don’t know.” She took the glasses.

“To him the second map was more accurate.” The wine glugged as he poured, bits of cork bobbing.

“Then why the map?” She seemed to relish her bewilderment, smiling and leaning closer to Taggart.

“That’s why it reminds me to question everything.”

“Come on.” She poked his chest. “Stop teasing.”

Taggart frowned, mildly disappointed she hadn’t figured out his puzzle and wondering if she purposefully played dumb in an effort to seduce him. “Mercator had to have received the information for the first map from somewhere, right? A century later, the concept of a southern landmass had actually disappeared.”

“Another map?” she guessed.

He grinned. “A very, very old map indeed. Mercator’s later map was likely based on exploration using modern instrumentation then believed to be superior to that used to chart the first map.”

“Cheers,” she said. Their glasses clinked. “Here’s to questioning everything.”

The maps had been gifts of his grandmother, and that fact dampened his pleasure in them and in the story.

She looked at him over the crystal rim as she drank. He slumped into the armchair and left her the couch. She shifted the empty pizza box, but halted when she picked up one of the books lying underneath.

“Coptic Christianity in the …” she read the title aloud. “This from the crate?” He nodded. Her eyes swept over a bookshelf. “The Gnostic Gospels, The Pagan Christ. Sounds pretty inflammatory. You know I’m a Catholic, lapsed anyway.”

He tensed. “Yes, well, I assure you, I have an objective approach to my research.”

She hopped off the couch, knelt before the crate, and plunged her hand into the torn boxboard. “Let’s see what else you’ve got.” The top of a purple thong slid out from under her jeans.

“Be my guest.” He let the wine swirl over his tongue.

“What the …? Tagg!” she exclaimed.

He started guiltily from his leer.

“What the hell is this?” she asked, twisting.

Blinking rapidly, he realized her shout was not due to his ogling. He peered over her shoulder and dropped his wine glass; liquid sprayed across the dirty carpet.

Her eyes were those of a lover, and they retained the luster of the golden tablet that rested across her knees.

Chapter Four

With Sam’s jackal mask off, the pretence of anonymity was discarded. A thick vein pulsed on Sam’s forehead, down her taut cheek and corded neck, disappearing into black robes. Elen hung by her wrists, manacled too high for her toes to touch the stone floor. She shook in the dank underworld and regarded her daughter.

“You don’t have the Codex.” The Pharaoh hulked upon a throne like a statue of Ramesses II, replete with red hair and fiery beard. He was just a man, but his power washed down the pyramid of steps to break over Sam’s dark face. Her fingers traced the raised veins of her cheek.

In the balconies above, dwarfs clustered with other followers of Seth, the deity of the so-called Shemsu Seth. Sam bent under the weight of their catcalls, her gaze shifting to her sandaled feet; its black leather straps laced fine-boned toes.

“You don’t have the Codex, and you bring your mother in its stead. You did not kill her.”

“The woman knows,” Sam stuttered, lifting her head.

“Speak or die, woman.” The Pharaoh stood and raised his djed staff, a thick shaft of burnished mahogany topped by four equal crossbars. The air filled with static. “Where is the spinal chord?” Elen jerked against the manacles as Pharaoh pulled her forward over the pit. The hair on Sam’s arms and neck rose. Sparks arced between the crossbars of Pharaoh’s staff.

“We have the text, Pharaoh,” Sam soothed.

“Indecipherable,” he snapped. “And I would have the gold.” His words slid like the hiss of sand down a slope. “I would have the gold.” The congregation grumbled its accord. “Or I would have blood.”

“You have blood,” Sam confirmed, pressing on the vein. “I killed her partner.”

Elen’s chains jangled free of Pharaoh’s Void-grip.

“In battle?”

“No, in sacrifice. A handler attended. I gave the heart to Seth.”

“Handler,” Pharaoh called into the balconies.

A dwarf stood on the stone rail that held back the horde. His arms and shoulders were crowded with muscles.

“Is this true, did you witness?”

Sam swallowed.

“Sam sacrificed the man to Seth, Pharaoh.” The dwarf’s voice rang clear.

Pharaoh’s eyes brightened and Sam sensed him probing the dwarf’s mind.

“Seth accepts his sacrifice, blessings on you,” Pharaoh rumbled.

“Blessings on the temple,” Sam responded, drawing a breath.

“Did you use a black ankh?” Pharaoh asked. A sacrifice made using a black ankh consigned the energy of the victim to the Void, a complete death for the human portion of the soul, which would spend eternity roaming the animal Void.

Sam shook her head. Jeers sluiced down from above. Since she had not used the ankh, Pharaoh could require another sacrifice. Sam glanced to her mother. The woman’s chin rested on her chest, and she stared into the pit at her feet.

“We will remedy that,” Pharaoh said, eyeing Elen.

“Give me until Re’s second eye rises,” Sam requested. The second eye meant the full moon, a fortnight before Akhet, the Ancient Egyptian New Year. A sacrifice to Seth then would be auspicious.

Pharaoh paused. From the distance, his face was in darkness, but his eyes glowed. The ominous glow wasn’t due to the reflection of the liquid filled vessels that lit the underworld from high niches. Pharaoh was Void-touched. The cast of his eyes showed he had held the Void too long. Sam clasped and unclasped her hands under the red-tinged gaze.

“Gold or blood when the moon is full.” The Pharaoh’s mouth split into a grin. “He was your first, I understand.” He turned to retrieve an item beside the throne. “Congratulations.”

At the base of the stairs to Pharaoh’s throne was an altar carved from a single piece of alabaster. Nine spouts protruded from the altar’s central circular groove. Nine holes in the floor collected the spouts’ offerings. The Pharaoh descended to stand before the altar.

Sam took a single step back and then held. As he approached, Pharaoh grew larger until he overshadowed the star altar. Upon it, Pharaoh placed a crossbow and a quiver of bolts.

“May these serve Seth well.”

“Hail, Seth!” Approval crashed.

A rush of pleasure flushed Sam’s cheeks. When she had first joined the Shemsu Seth, she had been tested, and although she could harness the Void, Pharaoh had been disappointed; the Void she could reach was a trickle when compared to his strength.

She stepped forward, looking from the weapon to Pharaoh. His pale broad face had a wide flat nose placed between considerable cheekbones and above a cavernous mouth. A delta of deep wrinkles spread from the corners of his lips and eyes. His skin appeared stretched thin over his skull. Beneath the shadow of his brow, the eyes shone. When she reached for the crossbow, his mottled hand touched hers. One finger traced the tendons on the back of her hand. She retrieved the weapon, a black, modern crossbow, timeless, yet fitted with a laser sight.

She attached the quiver to its base and slid her robe’s cord through a loop that enabled her to shoulder the weapon. The oiled crank-mechanism glistened. She grasped its haft and smirked as she aimed.

“When the full moon rises, Pharaoh.”

The laser sight traced a red dot on her mother’s forehead.