Our two companions safely returned, our attention turned to another pressing danger in the form of an army of winged hyenas that were bearing down on Pi Rameses, and the ancient evil who led them.
I had been working on a way to free the maresh from what held them prisoner, but another way came open, only this one had a terribly high cost...
29 HetHert, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (October 15th, 1275 BCE)
In the morning, we rose and met again. I had the girl who was sacrificed raised, and it turned out that she was a Nubian princess. Rameses said he'd take care of her, and I talked to the others about the fourteen hundred maresh heading this way, with Menes in tow. And then there was Reneb, the first maresh, heading down this way at a frighteningly high rate of speed. Last night, he'd been at the Second Cataract. This morning, he was near Thebes. We decided to head out, hoping that the maresh would follow me rather than attack Pi Rameses while it was pitifully underdefended.
Grrrbek decided to decorate "his" airship with pennants, and we got ourselves ready to go. Before we left, we asked Peribsen if he wanted to be alive again. He said he did, and Terik used his sword on Peribsen's soul jar and restored him to life. Rameses said he'd keep Peribsen with him as a replacement for the First Prime, who although he's been healed isn't going to be up to much of anything strenuous for some time yet. (I did see him, poor thing. He is obviously about as good a patient as I am.) Sekath, too, was to stay behind.
We headed out east and then turned south towards Thebes. I kept an eye on the maresh and Reneb, and felt about fifty peel off from the main number and head towards us. The rest settled down about where the temple we'd knocked down the day before was. We weren't sure what they were doing, but were afraid they were going to try to overrun Pi Rameses.
I scried, and discovered that they were excavating something. For the moment, all we had to worry about were the maresh, and Reneb. I was a bit apprehensive about the prospect of meeting both of them at the same time. We decided to lead into the doorknob and have Raam's dragon Wadjet fly us to Abydos, the city that the Unas had taken over, where we hoped we could meet up with Reneb without the maresh to back him up.
Amunet told us that he could get us into Abydos, now taken over by the Unas. He explained that the council had been helping the Unas for years, and his name especially meant something among them.
We chose to believe him, and walked more or less up to the front door of Abydos. Mayet and Terik stayed in the doorknob, but the rest of us went for an audience with the old Unas who appeared to be in charge. Amunet spoke to him for a little bit, and he agreed to help us fight the maresh who were on their way.
Grrrbek wandered away, saying something about wondering if the Unas could use a new god, and Raam also left. Reneb had a couple of tombs in the city, and the rest of us went to go look at them. The first was mostly destroyed, but the second was...interesting.
It was sealed with, strangely enough, seals of Sekhmet. Pepy, after looking at it, pressed his holy symbol against it. and the sigils powered down. Then the wall blocking the way in opened. Looking at each other, we shrugged and went down.
Terik turned on his sword, and I cast Detect Undead, finding a single undead presence, heading our way. We disarmed a trap in the antechamber, and then met the undead--it appeared to be a Sekhmet cleric, complete with intact holy symbol. Terik turned off his sword, and we spoke to him. It turned out that the Sekhmet cleric had been left here to guard about a hundred and fifty hibernating maresh. Reneb had left them here, and they had hoped that he would never return for them--but if he did, they left an undying guardian to keep them safely asleep. Any disturbance, and they would wake.
I hated to break it to him that Reneb was indeed on his way. In fact, he was nearly at the front door, though we trusted the seals to keep him out for the moment. The Sekhmet cleric showed us one more thing--a small room with four wands, one on each wall. The north wall had a wand with transportation magic in it, the east wand had illusion, the south was alteration, and west was necromantic--healing, I thought.
They were spelled so that direct contact with anyone who was casting anything but divine magic would destroy them. Amunet pocketed them and replaced them with replicas that he pulled out of his armpit. He mentioned that the identify ring told him that the alteration wand would cast any alteration-sphere spell you could name, and would use as many charges as the level of the spell you were casting.
When he removed the illusion wand, the wall that had held it disappeared. Behind it was staircase downwards...each step trapped. Amunet visibly brightened at this, and got to work.
Reneb had been pacing at the front door for a few minutes now, and we decided to go up and say hello. I opened a dimension door, and up we went, except for Amunet. (Ever heard the story of the kid who got a heap of camel dung for his birthday, only to dig into it with the exclmation, "There must be a camel under here somewhere!" It was exactly like that.)
Evidently, Raam and Reneb had been talking. Grrrbek was there as well. Raam looked a bit confused, and Grrrbek looked large and angry. Later, I heard that Reneb had told Raam that the Rememberer had something he needed--life. Reneb turned when I came through the dimension door, closing it behind me, and Grrrbek evidently decided that enough was enough and sank his teeth into Reneb's shoulder.
There were a few attacks and a few spells slung, and Mayet shouted urgently, "He's regenerating!" At that point, Reneb disappeared, dissolving into a mist.
Suddenly, I was a hyena.
I turned to where Usi and Isu had been behind me. They were both in their tailless forms, Isu grabbing Usi's arm, trying frantically to keep him from walking forward in some sort of trance.
Usi! I yelled silently, leaning against his legs, trying to help Isu stop him. Usi, what's happening?
No reply.
I think it was about that point that I began to truly be afraid.
Isu was snarling, and she threw me a frantic look. "Want back? I think--"
Please! She changed, and I was back in my two-legged shape. Usi did not change. I tried a Dispel Magic on him that did not work, and Usi just looked at me from eyes that only passingly resembled my familiar's.
Pepy hit him, and I screamed, feeling the blow as if it had been to my own body. Grrrbek took ahold of him, and I said, "He's still my familiar, anything you do, I feel!" Gritting my teeth, I asked the soul that currently had hold of Usi, "What are you doing?"
As best he could while being shaken by Grrrbek, he said, "I've replaced Rememberer. Soon, it will be permanent. You have a choice. Kill me and free the maresh from their pain, or keep me alive and accept me as the Rememberer I will be--able to control you as yours was."
I shook my head. "I doubt that." But even if he couldn't control me, being a familiar to Reneb would be unpleasant at best, and fatal at worst--and it was not just me in that bond, but Isu as well.
Raam clarified, "If we kill you, the maresh are free?"
None of the others could have known that the smile on what had been Usi's lips was one that certainly did not belong on his face, a twisted, slow thing. "Yes."
"One life for fourteen hundred allies." The look he gave me was almost apologetic. "Drop him, Grrrbek."
The god complied, and before I could speak or act, Raam's blade ended Reneb--and Usi's--life.
I and Isu collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Mayet dragged us both into the doorknob. While we were out, the maresh arrived--and the ones from below came up, the seals on the tomb powered down. They asked, "Who is the one who felled Reneb?"
Grrrbek stepped up, and said, "We did! All of us."
The lead maresh bowed, and said, "Our lives are yours then. All of us." He paused and said, "Those north of here wish to know what you want them to do."
"Have them come here. They can help guard Abydos," said Raam.
"And the one who is not one of us? He is leaving. He is formidable, but all of us will give our lives to stop him if that is what you desire."
Raam deliberated. "Let him go, and have them come here." The maresh nodded and bowed again, his spread wings brushing the ground on either side of them.
They burned Usi's body, as there was no bringing him back without bringing back Reneb. I woke, feeling as if a part of me had been forcibly torn away. Isu wasn't in much better shape. I'm afraid I had a fit of hysterics, and Mayet, embarrassingly enough, had to soothe me.
When I recovered my wits, we went outside. All that was left of Usi was some claws and his blackened skull. I gathered the pieces that were left and without comment wrapped them in a cloth, stowing them in my bag. My shocked mind left my body to do its work, but I knew that I would want to inter what was left of Usi somewhere. Where, I was not certain.
Finally, the fact that greyling had been trying to get my attention penetrated the haze. "Amunet says that when Reneb died, all of the traps on the steps that he'd been working on came undone. He says he'll let us know what he finds."
Raam decided to go tell the Unas not to attack the maresh. Fortunately, this removed him from my sight. After a while, Amunet reported in, saying that he'd found a treasure room with four trap doors that had glowing mists in them. There was another door, he said, that was very strange--it was like a horizontal hole. After some experiments, Amunet jumped into the hole.
After a bit, he said, "I've found what looks like Reneb's real tomb. Not that it looks like he ever used it. Interesting stuff down here. The sarcophagus is full of a weird liquid. I'll bring back the scrolls I'm finding."
He did so, using the teleportation knife. After some exploration, Terik brought back four canopic jars, each full of an different liquid. I found that the trap doors in the floor of the treasure room were for charging the wands Amunet had found. (I also picked up some of the lighter bits and pieces from that room, since we're heading back towards Gebelein. I'm sure Senit could always use some bits and bobs.)
I realized about halfway through looking through the scrolls that Amunet had brought back that I was driving myself into what I could feel was utter exhaustion, trying to keep ahead of the hurt I knew damn well was coming. As we picked through the scrolls, we could see that there were pieces about the history of the Maresh, and even more interesting, bits about what Menes had been doing in the years that Reneb had been alive--and afterwards.
The magical scrolls were also interesting--many of them Anubis auguries, and one that, Pepy reported, would actually call an avatar of Anubis here. As Pepy and I went through them, I heard Grrrbek's voice booming out, telling a story to the maresh, a mythology in which he figured prominently. I hid a small smile and kept working.
After a time, I noticed that Mayet was hovering over me, looking concerned. I rolled up the scroll I'd been working on and said, quietly, "I'm sorry, but would you leave me alone for a little while?"
Her look told me that she wasn't going to go away. Not in the mood to argue, I was the one that left, heading into the doorknob with one of the canopic jars, ostensibly to spend some time identifying it. As I went, I saw that the maresh, as I passed by, each turned to me and Isu and knelt. Something about that made my skin crawl.
So much gained from such a sacrifice. Selfishly, I wished it had not had to happen. I realized that Raam had made the only decision he could, but I was still going to have to control myself the next time I saw him.
Within the doorknob, there is a place that I tend to go with the hyenas, gardens miles long where they can run and wrestle. And it was there that the doorknob took me, depositing me on the strange lawn.
It was there that I sank to the ground, curled up with Isu, both of us howling with grief. After a few moments, I felt Imhotep's familiar presence press into me, the warmth of his body becoming real behind me.
It was comfort I accepted without question, and that I sorely needed. I'd failed Usi, failed the one duty Chosen has above all other--protect Rememberer. The space his absence left was wide and deep. The place he had always been, wry and occasionally sardonic, sometimes gruff but always deeply loved, was now completely empty.
And yet tomorrow, I will have to pick myself up and take up this fight once more.
If I can.
Quotes:
"You were right. She didn't know what she wasn't necessarily looking for."
--Bryan
"They had a recruitment drive--join and get a free pyramid. Of course it was two inches high, but..." --Laura
"If I show up, a fight will break out."
"It's your soothing personality."
--Kris, Bryan
"She's like Helen of Troy. She's got the face that launched a thousand flying hyenas."
"That's...not flattering."
--Laura, Kris
"It appears that the hyena has been bitten by a fucking badger."
--Raam
"You need a sword that gets bigger whenever you do."
"It's not the size of the sword but how you use it, missy."
--Sitefnut, Grrrbek
"Isu's a pretty blonde elf, and Usi is a darker Pierce Brosnan type."
"I like them better this way."
--Kris, Bryan
