Opener of the Sky Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Mary R. Woldering

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 153743943X

  ISBN 13: 9781537439433

  To my parents and my family; Jackie and Ruth,

  who nurtured my creative soul.

  To my son Thom,

  for being my editor and formatter for this volume.

  To Annette Taylor,

  first with me on my journey, without whom this story would never have been told

  and

  To the memory of Clarence H. “Buddy” Bell July 17, 1948 -January 4, 2016

  always a fan and friend.

  Author’s Note

  Welcome back. I’m glad you’re here again if you’re a continuing reader, and glad you could join us if this is your first look into the Children of Stone series. As our story continues in just a moment, we will be looking back to around the year 2500 B.C. in Egypt and the Middle East to explore continuing story of the Children of Stone and those whose lives they affected. In this work of historical fiction, I have used many proper names for places and peoples in this story which are believed to have been used historically. I’ve included a glossary with this novel to explain the locations visited and terminology used throughout the book. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this story, and that the extra material provided allows you to better understand the historical setting in which this novel takes place. Enjoy!

  Contents

  PART ONE: VISIONS OF THE FALL

  CHAPTER 1: HOW AND WHY

  CHAPTER 2: SOKOR

  CHAPTER 3: KHMENU

  CHAPTER 4: QUSTUL

  CHAPTER 5: WSERKAF’S MESSAGE

  PART TWO: DJERAH

  CHAPTER 6: BLACK WATER IN THE WELL

  CHAPTER 7: PEACEKEEPERS AND PLANS

  CHAPTER 8: THE BASKET

  CHAPTER 9: ONE EAST, ONE WEST, ONE MORE

  CHAPTER 10: TRUTH IS HARD

  CHAPTER 11: DREAM SPACE

  CHAPTER 12: JOURNEY UP THE RIVER

  CHAPTER 13: QUSTUL AMANI

  PART 3: THE STORM

  CHAPTER 14: THE LINK

  CHAPTER 15: THE INSULT

  CHAPTER 16: DJERAH’S REVELATION

  CHAPTER 17: ACTIONS IN HASTE

  CHAPTER 18: DEFEAT

  CHAPTER 19: WITNESS

  CHAPTER 20: ENTRY INTO THE CAMP

  CHAPTER 21: THE CHILDREN’S EMBRACE

  CHAPTER 22: INTERIM

  CHAPTER 23: THE FLEDGLING

  PART 4: RETURNINGS AND REVELATIONS

  CHAPTER 24: REGROUPING

  CHAPTER 25: DJERAH REBORN

  CHAPTER 26: AMENY

  CHAPTER 27: RESOLUTION DELAYED

  CHAPTER 28: THE UNQUIET FUTURE

  CHAPTER 29: ONE IS MISSING

  CHAPTER 30: THE DARK BALANCE

  PART 5: WOLVES AND LIONS

  CHAPTER 31: WEPWAWET

  CHAPTER 32: LION

  CHAPTER 33: OPEN THE SKY

  CHAPTER 34: FIRE IN THE BLOOD

  CHAPTER 35: SETTLING IN TIME

  CHAPTER 36: PEACE OF AMANI

  CHAPTER 37: FLOWER OF LIFE

  EPILOGUE: OPENER OF THE SKY

  GLOSSARY

  PART ONE: VISIONS OF THE FALL

  CHAPTER 1: HOW AND WHY

  Ha-go-re! Akh-go-re Nejter Deka Nefer Sekht

  my name is sung ever-present

  though I am here.

  I fly to you, I come

  On dark but burning wings I walk on air

  Open the sky to me

  Ha-go-re Ta-te

  The low tones of Deka’s self-healing song roused Ariennu from her stupor-filled sleep. Beset by her fuzzy waking vision, Ari rolled on her right side and saw her former companion sitting cross-legged and studying her crimson painted nails as she sang the tuneful babble.

  Goddess, I’m so sick, Ari shuddered. Does she have to sing now, too? Someone make her stop! the woman clutched her ears.

  So many years earlier, when Deka had been dragged into N’ahab-Atall’s wilderness camp, she sang that same song. Ari hadn’t been able to hear the words that the cinnamon-skinned woman sang back then. In those days, she had been almost totally deaf. She had known by looking at the Ta-Seti woman’s expression that she was singing instead of speaking. The song was the only sound Deka made for a long time.

  Ari remembered their first conversation through the pain of her dry throat and aching head, even recalling the way her stern command had sounded. You close your hole, or I’ll close it for you! her thoughts had snarled. She had struggled to follow the thought with words that she herself could not hear. “Gloas eh!” the unheard sound had emerged from her. After that, she had balled her fist and with a roar of distorted words cuffed the woman mightily. “I gloas eh for ew!” After that, Deka had fallen completely silent and dull. Only a spark of fire flashed in the dark woman’s eyes like a tiny, evil dart. That had been over fifty sun cycles ago in the weed-blown, rocky sand of the eastern wilderness far to the south of Kina land.

  Glancing around weakly, Ari brought herself back to the present. The russet-haired woman realized she was on a boat propelled by many rowers on a great body of rushing water. She felt the sway of the waters and the rhythmic push of the oars as the vessel sped along. The rest wasn’t clear, except that it was the morning after the Sending Forth party.

  Has to be the morning after. The wind blew at the flap to the cabin in which Ari was laying. She slammed her aching eyes shut in reaction to the horrid pain the light brought.

  Oh, your happy little tune I see. You’re enjoying this. Damn it, even my stone hurts! What did they do to me? That prince and his grandfather doubled up on me, they did. Bet the prince even shoveled his own wine-sickness on me, the nasty cur! No. Just, no, her thoughts swarmed and then gained enough strength for her to shriek aloud.

  “Yaugh! You! Why did you do this to me? Miserable, pus-dripping kuna! Let me get up and kill you,” she struggled to curl up and then lashed out, grabbing Deka’s hand so she could yank her forward and clout her with her other fist. She was on the verge of throttling the woman, but a man’s voice sounded outside the draped cabin door.

  “You in there! Calm down. You want us to come in and calm you?”

  Ari winced at the harsh sound the man’s voice made, then collapsed into her part of the mat. Guards. Dammit. It figures. I should tell them she’s hurting me. Get her ugly self-beaten ‘til I can work up the fist I’ll shove down her throat when they’re done.

  Out of one re-opened eye, Ari saw Deka, unmoved by her ranting, wave away the guard on the other side of the slit opening in the drape just as his sun-black hand began to part it.

  “Oh! Good! Send him away, you stupid, stupid – so he won’t notice me strangle you!” Ariennu squawked. “I want you dead, you hear me?”

  Suddenly, her rage broke as she paused, panted, then rolled her eyes in delight. The events of the night that had just cascaded through her memory, but any delight was quickly replaced by nauseating sickness. This has to be some sort of spell. Bet the old man cast it on me, she remembered more as she worked to stop the blistering pain and nausea.

  Ari rose, still weak, then inched closer to Deka.

  “If this is about what I did with your precious man, then you deserved me doing it and I’ll do it again the next time I get the chance.” She grabbed her head in pain and fell back onto her mat. Why do I still feel sick? It’s been hours since sunrise. My stone should have been working the whole time to get the wine -sick out of me. The old man put his hand with that nasty black leather ring on my head before they took me. Goddess… Is my stone gone? Did he find a way to take it out of my head?

  She clapped her hand to her forehead in momentary panic, but felt the slight rise under her brow. The Child
Stone which had been placed in her forehead so long ago was still there. Its weak signature told her it was still working to cure her of any impurities or flaws. She knew her first guess was correct. The prince had used his own spell to make her suffer both of their hangovers at the same time. He needed to be sober and well by the time the sun rose and his ships were under way.

  “Prince Maatkare… your precious prince. He liked it with me, he did. I bet you he liked it with me more than he does with you. He took me with him after just one night and you’ve had him almost a month. Maybe he plans to put you out once we get to your precious Ta-Seti. Maybe he’s already bored by you and wants to have more of me,” Ari shrieked. “Now I remember. I think he even said something like that,” she half-lied, knowing she was too busy enjoying herself last night to remember anything coherent either of them had said to each other.

  Another thought floated through her as if the Child Stone in her head had decided to distract her. “Naibe?” Ariennu realized Naibe-Ellit wasn’t on the boat with either of them. For a moment she thought the youngest of the three women hadn’t been abducted.

  Hmmm, King. Baby’s with the King I guess. Then, she remembered Hordjedtef’s voice as it ordered men to ‘fetch the other one when the king sleeps.’ Well, damn him then. I guess now you’ll tell me the prince is on some other boat trying Naibe on for size – if he’s got anything left to try with. She remembered they had obliterated themselves with wine and beer, then at the moment when she thought she had drunk him to the ground he had rallied and leaped at her. The rest of her memory of the evening involved them going at each other in an unparalleled and white hot frenzy until both of them blacked out. She had come to her sated senses first and stumbled around the darkened palace plaza until she was seized by the prince’s guards. She thought of Deka, then of where they were headed, in growing panic. No, this is too much. It was getting thin between me and this she-beast before. After this, there really can’t be any kinship or manners between us.

  Deka found her voice at that darkest of moments, but couldn’t or wouldn’t look Ari in the eye when she spoke.

  “I hear your thoughts so angry, Wise MaMa.” Deka’s low and lyrical voice used the name she had always called the eldest woman since the time when they had been friends. “You still think I am like you. I am not. I never was. Don’t hate me because you finally see that now. I have said it to you for so many, many years,” her voice hushed. “Your thoughts are right about Naibe-Ellit. Brown Eyes is on the other boat, my sister. She is with Prince Maatkare,” the Ta-Seti woman’s voice bore no hint of distress or jealousy.

  “What? Don’t you sister me. Sickness! You’re sick! You know that?” Ariennu sat partway up again, animated by even more rage. “So you hand us over to that whispering devil – ‘O Lady ArreNu ’ – I can hear the old man yet. Damn you! Why? Because I decided to have some sport last night with your murdering dog of a prince? Murdering. You should hear what a man will say when he’s so drunk his tongue has thoughts of its own. I just meant to show you that you had no need to shut the rest of us off from your thoughts over him. You won’t ever own him, even though you were acting like you did in front of his own wife and children. He doesn’t really want you, not more than he wants me and he won’t want Brown Eyes much either, once he’s had a few rounds with her. I know his kind and you ought to by this time. His El is a desperate thing. It never gets weary and never goes down for long – he’s gotta keep it wet all the time or the madness of the beast in him takes him over! You think I didn’t recognize that? At least I knew what I was getting,” she felt the waves of nausea hit her again.

  “Goddess, my head. If you’ve got a ring that curses my Child Stone like princie and his grandfather have, let me come over there and snap your finger off and spit on the stump.” For a moment Ariennu thought Deka might be wearing a black leathery ring just like the prince must have borrowed from the old high priest. She didn’t understand what it was, but knew she couldn’t look directly at it when either of the men wore it and that it nullified any strength her Child Stone gave her. She stuck her head out of the cabin and crawled over the side of the boat to retch. Damn him too, she suffered, feeling as though her guts were going inside out. He should be suffering worse. He did this to me, I know it.

  Deka waited patiently for Ari to stumble back into the cabin, unmoved. “No,” the Ta-Seti woman bowed her head when Ari returned. After a moment of silence she continued with her response. “How he is; his manner – it’s not the reason I am with him.”

  “Oh, it’s not the men, sister.” Ariennu mocked, because she knew what Deka would say. She had said it before. The thought that she might use that excuse once again seemed even less palatable. “Don’t even start to say it. You went to him like any desperate kuna I ever knew and now you think, you think…” She gasped, wiping her mouth. She was winded from nausea. “I could just strangle you.”

  Ariennu had never been the sort of woman to burst into tears, but now she found herself weeping in frustrated rage because she really wanted to kill Deka. On top of that, the Child Stone in her brow had noticed her anger and had begun to exude calming waves throughout her body. That sedateness, coupled with the weakness of a magically doubled hangover, nearly paralyzed her. Aww, my stone must have allowed that bottom crawling keleb to give me the sickness because it knew I would get up and hurt her if I wasn’t so sick. Dammit! Fighting through her frustration, she continued her rant.

  “You wouldn’t even have Marai like a normal woman, but you want that? He’s nothing but a big, hot shank to fill your belly up to the bottom of your neck and then he’s on to the next hungry kuna! You’re nothing to him but a honey hole. What is wrong with you?”

  “Again,” Deka sighed almost tenderly, “I never was like either of you. Even the Ntr Stones, the Children, know this.”

  Right. I know. I don’t want to hear you now, not about them. Ari thought as she breathed out in disgust. At least they’re safe now. She remembered that the old man had asked Deka to locate the missing eight stones. He’d asked Ari himself before the party. She fully understood why her own Child Stone, or perhaps just her instinct, had told her to give the eight far seeing ones she had guarded to Prince Wserkaf instead of continuing to hide them herself all those weeks ago. One more thing – She lay on her back and reached to her left for her basket of things beside the mat where she and Deka sat. Groping deep inside, she lifted up part of the woven false bottom and removed a fine linen sleeve. It was empty. The crystal wdjat she had taken in trade for the eight stones had been removed from it.

  “You,” her voice drained, sickened. She rubbed her eyes as if the last realization had been too much. “Deka, how could you?”

  “His Highness had seen it in the past when Prince Wserkaf wore it. He knew it had been ‘lost’. When I saw it was in your bag, I showed it to him early last evening. You were watching Brown Eyes dance. He asked me to bring it, but to keep it a secret from his grandfather. He wanted to study its energy… to see how it worked. I gave it to him. He is very strong of heart in these matters. His kingship will be a mighty one.”

  Ariennu saw Deka look away with a dreamy, almost girlish look in her half-shut eyes.

  “You fool! He killed his first wife; King Menkaure’s own daughter.” Ariennu shrieked. At that instant, Deka’s fingertips went up in a gesture for her to be quiet.

  Ari realized she had been screaming in Kina. Her native tongue masked her words in babble until she uttered King Menkaure. That evoked an immediate rustle from the guards outside. She paused, panting, then continued through her teeth so the men wouldn’t be able to understand her. “Even the power of all the gods in this land combined could not make him a king now. He’s still alive only because of Hordjedtef’s meddling, and you know it.”

  Ariennu wanted to mock and chant the words of everything she had learned, but sucked in her secret. “He told you he would choose you as god’s wife when he became king?” she scoffed. “Are you twice the fool you
appear to be? Did you notice he already has a wife? Children by her. Is that how you came to spread your legs so fast? On that promise made of air? Did you not even notice the women in this land make the choice of who will be king?”

  “He said nothing like that to me,” Deka had bowed her head.

  Ari blinked her eyes again, indicating she was listening more intently.

  “When I was with him the first time,” Deka’s eyes looked down at Ariennu again.

  The elder woman shaded her eyes from the painful shaft of light from outside the curtains. It had found its way into the cabin once more. Even though she could no longer see Deka, she knew the Ta-Seti woman had told the truth.

  “I learned what I was before – my lost memory returned. All that had been hidden from me came back. His noble heart woke it in me. The ignorant Bone Woman Deka has died, perhaps. I am not one merely for a man’s pleasure as you or Brown Eyes are. I am already a Seti by place and Neteru by my bloodline. I know I was once Kentake, a god’s mother, before all was taken from me: my life ended in the sand wastes near the place where we will go. My beloved ascended to the sky and my sweet child languished from its birth. I, too, was wounded, and lay too hurt to save it. All was dead until he resurrected the memory of it in me. My name was and is once again Nefira Sekht, the beautiful lion, his beautiful eye. Daughter of the god. I died long ago and I became a ghost, but now I return! I Go Forth By Day! We learn together. He is my brother in Monthu; in Ptah-ten-Atum’s dark glory. I am become god again and have chosen him as my king. As for his wife, she too is unlike me. She is merely a commoner, a concubine whom he had honored with his home for birthing his young. To that state she will be returned.”

  Ariennu’s head had hurt too much for her to piece together all of the things Deka was telling her. Even in pain, she felt her blood run just a little colder when she heard the words Ptah-ten-Atum come out of her former companion’s mouth. Deka, or this Nefira Sekht as she wanted to be called, had been trying to say those words ever since the sorcerer had dragged her into the wilderness camp.