10 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (July 30th, 1275 BCE)
Pepy believes that the Anubis priests wish to bring back the pharaoh Menes back to life. We have all heard the stories about Menes; some evil echoes down through the ages, and his is one of them. He united Egypt, for which we are all grateful, but the man himself was loathsome enough that it is an undercurrent on every story told about him.
Why Menes? Evidently, the Anubis clerics think he is the incarnation of Anubis, for whatever reason. (Jackals: all crazy.)
I still think Pepy is lying to us, and evidently Terik agrees with me, as he questioned the Sekhmet cleric closely. He said that Ahmose had probably mistaken him for someone else...but if that was the case, why did Pepy recognize Ahmose? I certainly didn't.
I don't think his lies are doing us any harm for the moment, so I let it be. But I watch him, carefully.
The high priest we freed yesterday says he's going to go to Pi Ramses and try to get support there to take back the Temple at Thebes. We briefly discussed accompanying him, but an argument about what to do with the longsword broke out instead. I maintained that it's not ours and should go back to the pharaoh, especially since it seems to attract unwelcome attention. In the end, we decided to try and find the pharaoh and give him the sword.
Fortunately for us, Ramses is in Thebes. Raam--excuse me, Lord Raam--said that he could probably get us an audience. We elected to try to rendezvous with the imperial barge outside of Thebes, since we are probably currently wanted for murder within the city. (Damnit. I didn't get to see nearly enough of the city, and now it'll be years before I can go back, and I wasn't planning on coming back this way anyway.)
Speaking of Raam, he is not lying to us, as far as I can tell, but he is certainly not telling us the whole truth. I'm keeping a close eye on him. Mayet's future has not yet been settled, after all, and if she ever decides she wants to marry I might as well have a list in mind to recommend. That day is unlikely to be any time soon, however, unless her experiences on the road change her far more than I think they will.
Today, we travel. Tomorrow, an audience with the pharaoh.
I feel as though I should be more awed than I am, but I am mostly grateful that we are finally getting rid of the stupid sword. Magic swords, bah.
11 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (July 31st, 1275 BCE)
We arrived on the banks of the Nile in good time, and when we saw the barge Raam tossed a rock at the guards, to get their attention. Instantly, twenty bows were drawn and aimed at us. Fortunately, Raam waved, and they relaxed, seeming to recognize him. They sent out a boat for us, and we were brought before the pharaoh.
Usi stayed very close to my heels. I was not certain about the acceptability of bringing him into the pharaoh's presence, but I was not about to leave him behind. Even with the collar as a sign that he belongs to someone, hyenas are much more often killed than tolerated.
Into the Serene Presence we went, and all but Raam knelt. We explained to him what had happened, and gave him the sword back. The pharaoh (so much younger than I had envisioned! A mere baby, a few years older than Mayet!) expressed confusion. Why, he wondered, had the sword been traveling to Thebes, when he had sent it to Pi Ramses not three weeks before?
There seems to be a traitor, highly placed.
We told him the story of finding the door to Ulath, and mentioned that we had someone who knew the passkey. That earned Pepy a suspicious look from Ramses. He mentioned, in the course of conversation, that Pepy had slave marks--and so he did, faint but noticeable. Another secret about Pepy, to add to the mystery. He finally gave the sword back to Terik and told him to go find Stongen, and bring him back to life. He told me to make sure Terik went there, and told Raam to get on with what he was supposed to be doing.
Well, then.
We asked for a pardon for the death of the false high priest, which was readily granted with a royal decree. While he was at it, he gave Raam five blank decrees, on official paper, with the official seal. He told Raam that he was leaving the country to go fight the Hittites, to try not to mess up Egypt too badly while he was gone, and told his first prime to obey Raam in all things. After that, we were more or less dismissed.
I leave my village and two weeks later I have actually had an audience with the Pharaoh. The implications are dizzying. And I have this strange feeling I might not spend the rest of my life sightseeing like I thought I would.
And Raam? Who--or what--is Raam to be made more or less into a pharaoh while Ramses is away?
To Ulath, then. Where we may find some answers.
12 Thuthi, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (August 1st, 1275 BCE)
We arrived at the door, walking down deserted tunnels. Pepy said, "I have returned, Lord Anubis", and the door opened.
("That was the passphrase?" said Raam.)
The air inside was stale and foul, and there was silence beyond. Mayet and I cast spells to detect undead, and she walked before the group and I behind. Usi stayed close, unlike outside where he tends to range away from us, loping tirelessly.
By the door there was a whole row of manacles, below them some scattered, gnawed bones. Here, likely, the thirty-one dwarves left alive had hung until they died.
We did not know what we would find within; we knew that there were only zombies and lesser undead left in the city, but who knows what those dwarves had turned into? We moved down the broad avenue cautiously. Ahead, near the center of the city, glowed a giant crystal. It had to have been eight or ten miles away, which meant it had to be huge.
We had been walking for most of an hour when Mayet sensed her first undead, a weak one, unmoving. Pepy said that the place where she'd sensed it was probably in or near the house of the wizard who had lived here when the city fell. None asked how he knew that, but Pepy seemed to know the place very well indeed.
He knew what lay behind a door seventeen hundred years closed. And he wonders why we are suspicious of him.
We headed towards the wizard's house for lack of a better idea, and Usi said, "Wait. Stop a moment. Let them get ahead." I did so, and why he'd said this was quickly obvious--a group of undead were following us, just out of the range of our spells. That argued for the group being in control of one of the greater undead, one with a mind.
I let the rest know this when I caught up and we decided to see if the wizard's house was defensible. There were alarms on the doors, but we silenced them and went inside. Within, it was indeed a wizard's house, and the undead we had sense was still behind a door, unmoving. Amunet got the bright idea of peering through the keyhole before walking inside, and it's a good thing he did--the zombie was sitting, holding a pair of rods leveled at the door. Sensing a trap, we chose to not spring it.
I found three books that looked interesting. After all, they were not buried with the wizard so he would have no access to them from the next life, and he was seventeen hundred years past caring, anyway.
We decided not to stay and Amunet produced a very large ball of string from his armpit, which he tied to the door of the room with the zombie within. We move about a block away, and the group of undead was just passing the wizard's house, when Amunet pulled the string.
The entire block went up in flames--and so did most of the undead who had been following us. All right, I have to admit that the elf has his useful moments, tomb robber or no. We began to pick up the pace, heading toward the center of the city. We had our choice of places to hole up, but decided that the king's residence looked most likely. Up close, that crystal we had seen was enormous, probably fifteen times Raam's height.
We had a ghost incoming, and we noticed that it made a detour around the crystal, as if coming close were painful. We quickly changed our plans and headed towards the crystal, which had a large and very strong shield against evil around it as well as a set of stairs leading up to a platform at the side. The ghost that had been heading for us stopped and spoke to Pepy; I didn't catch what he said, but I quite clearly heard Pepy call the ghost Stongen. Stongen, the very undead we were looking for.
Terik began to talk to the ghost, trying to convince it that we needed to kill it so we could bring it back to life. The ghost wasn't buying it in the least. He told Pepy, "Send out Plinth." When we inquired who Plinth was, he pointed at Pepy.
"Looks just like him."
Things fell into place. The thing about lies as large as the one Pepy was living is that when they come down, they come down. Pepy looked as if he didn't quite know what to say. However, things got a little confused about then as Terik continued to argue with Stongen and I heard Amunet and Raam exclaiming over something upstairs. Curious, I joined them.
There was a...thing. Like a mirror, but with writing. Writing that changed! It claimed it had nine charges of something left, and gave a choice of what we wanted to use those charges on--to make items into artifacts, it seemed. Or activate a drill. Not knowing what the drill would do, we left that option well alone.
A plan was quickly formed. We would take down as many zombies as we could with arrows, and then go out to fight the greater undead ourselves. Everyone but me, as ghosts take years off your life when they hit you, and I don't have that many left. We made Pepy and Raam's weapons magical, and Raam made Amunet's blade a little bit magical, so he could hit the ghosts. Evidently, Raam is one of those mind-mages I have occasionally read about. Is there anything he doesn't do?
I mostly sat the battle out, watching (a bit nervously) from the sidelines, scratching Usi's head. Mayet did well--a little practice turning undead has made her quite a bit more confident. Stongen was the strongest of the ghosts and the last one to fall, and when he did Pepy brought him back to life.
Pepy finally admitted that he was Plinth, the high priestl who had taken Ulath all those years ago and ordered Stongen and the rest sealed inside with the undead. That, however, was not why he had been cursed with immortality. That curse was because he'd slept with the pharaoh's favorite wife, gotten her pregnant, and then killed her.
When Pepy transgresses, he certainly doesn't do it halfway. (Definitely off the list.)
Stongen then demonstrated that he was a master metalsmith, pulling mithril out of the ground with his bare hands and making a sword out of it, perfectly forged. Then he made some armor for himself and a bit of weaponry for the others. I, of course, have little use for either arms or armor, but I might ask him to make me a scrying bowl before he leaves us. He also opened what appeared to be a door in the crystal--which, yes, was made out of a single diamond--and pulled out a very large number of nuts. He ate some and handed some to Raam, who looked surprised and pleased when he ate one, for some reason.
At that point, Usi nudged me. Humans, coming down the road.
I relayed this, and from the stairs Amunet called, "Thirty or forty Anubis priests, heading this way!"
We had discovered, earlier, that the drill was the crystal, and pointed straight up, into the ceiling. When its charges were exhausted, it would explode. A plan was quickly formed--we would ride the drill up through the ceiling and get out at the top, hopefully avoiding being blown up in the process. We took the diamond down to the requisite number of charges by making a ring of healing and a ring of identify for ourselves, and then activated the drill just as the first priest arrived.
That was a wild ride, the likes of which I hope I never do again. We were inside the diamond and it was spinning very quickly, making the most horrific noise. It slowed and stropped and we scrambled out.
It fell back down inside, and the ground trembled when it hit and then again when it shattered. Out of the hole flew diamond shards, which we spent a few minutes collecting. Stongen merged Raam's two swords, making one sword with the best qualities of both of the former swords.
Pepy--because I will not start calling him Plinth--gave us a few more details about what his life has been like. He has spent much of the time since he was cursed a slave, building pyramids. I could almost feel sorry for him, having his secret ripped out of his grasp like that. When I asked him why he lied, he said, "you wouldn't have believed me."
I'm a mage. My business is to believe impossible things.
We're still discussing what to do next. I am quietly pleased with both Mayet and Usi, who both did very well today.
And we still have the damned sword, but we're safer together than apart. Though I may see if Mayet has had her fill of adventures and wants to settle down in a Hathor temple somewhere along the way. She's holding up well, but this isn't what she imagined when we set out. And she has much more to lose than I....
Quotes:
"Hello, Plinth."
*uncomfortable silence*
"Well, this is an awkward moment, isn't it?"
--Stongen, Amunet
"Graham has the listing for the sword, right?"
"I have a book on drawing crotch variations."
"...okay."
--Kris, Graham
"If the Unas were free, who would do all the work?"
"We'd have to work for a living. That would suck."
--Raam and Amunet
"On your knees before I kill you."
--Ramses, gently reminding us of etiquette
"Get on with what you're supposed to be doing, Raam."
--Ramses
"I must look like someone he knew."
"I have that same problem in police stations all over the country."
--Pepy and Amunet
"My nostrils aren't as big as the diameter of the cork."
--Graham, who is occasionally three.
"I suppose you've heard the excuse, 'I was under orders'?"
--Pepy, to Stongen
"Do you remember the last 1700 years?"
"Every damned minute."
"So do I."
--Pepy, Stongen
