SESHAT
1904—St. Louis
The excitement of the parade had done its job, pulling people out into the wide boulevard and leaving the winding streets of Cairo nearly empty. Harte followed Esta as they made their way through the various bazaars selling their cheap trinkets and past the restaurant that left the air perfumed with the scent of heavy spices and roasting meats. His stomach rumbled at they passed, but he kept his focus on the back of Esta’s narrow shoulders and the constant hum of energy from the power inside of him.
When they came to the replica of the Egyptian temple that housed the boat ride, Harte nearly stumbled from the way the power inside of him lurched, letting its presence be known. There was something about this particular attraction that agitated the voice, but there was only one way in and out of the chamber that held the necklace, and that was through the Nile River. He did his best to ignore the power as he slipped the attendant a few extra coins for a private boat and then followed Esta into it.
A moment later their oarsman pushed off, and they were entering the darkness of the first tunnel. The world of the fair fell away, and there was only the gentle sound of the water being parted by the oar and the stale mustiness of the canal. Harte didn’t need to see Esta to know exactly where she was in the darkness. Even with the odor of the water, he could sense her next to him. Since she’d decided on the ridiculous ploy to dress like a boy, she’d given up the soft floral soap she’d used before. Instead, she had been using something simple and clean, and when the scent of it came to him in the darkness, the image of her in the morning, damp from washing and freshly scrubbed, rose in his mind.
It was a mistake—the power vibrated against the shell of who he was, pressing at the delicate barrier. Harte was intimately familiar with that boundary, because he often breached it himself when he let his affinity reach into a person to read their thoughts or shape their actions. Having his own threatened like this was an uncomfortable reminder of just how dangerous his affinity could be.
The oarsman was reciting his script in a monotone, but Harte could barely pay attention—all his focus was on keeping the power inside of him from bursting out. They passed through scenes depicting life in ancient Egypt—the building of the pyramids and the flooding of the Nile, with its resulting harvest. Faintly, the names of gods and goddesses registered, but as the boat progressed, the power grew stronger, and it became harder and harder to hold it back.
Esta was sitting next to him, her back straight and her attention forward—preparing, probably, for what they needed to do—but Harte could barely see straight. His hands felt clammy. His head swirled and the edges of his vision wavered as the voice echoed in his ears, screaming words he didn’t understand in a language he did not know.
When they neared the end of the ride, the voice went silent and the power stilled, both falling away and leaving only a hollowed-out emptiness behind. Panting now, Harte forced himself to take a deep, steadying breath. They were nearly there. Two more chambers and then they would disembark and walk the so-called Path of Righteousness to the Temple of Khorassan, where the Djinni’s Star waited. But the moment the boat began to enter the chamber filled with parchments and scrolls, the power lurched once again.
If Harte had thought it strong, or if he had thought himself able to control it, he realized that he’d been wrong. So wrong. Everything he’d experienced before had been nothing but a shadow of its true power. It had been hiding itself, perhaps waiting for this moment.
The boat, the false Nile, and the room of scrolls transformed itself into a different time, another place. The walls were rounded up to a ceiling that had been painted gold, and in the center of the room stood an altarlike table that held a book. A woman stood over it, her coiled hair hung around her lean face. Her kohl-rimmed eyes were focused on the parchment in front of her, and the very air seemed to tremble with the urgency she felt. There was magic here, warm and thick and stronger than Harte had ever felt before.
The woman’s mouth was forming words that he could not hear, but he understood their meaning because he could feel their power vibrating through the air, brushing against him with an unmistakable threat. It reminded him of what it had felt like when Esta pulled him through time, awful and dangerous and wrong. As though the world were collapsing and breaking apart all at once. He watched with dread as she took a knife and sliced open her fingertip, dripping the dark blood into a small cup.
She picked up a reed and dipped it into the cup, mixing it before she touched it to the parchment. With each stroke, the energy in the air increased, whipping about with an impossible fury. Hot. Angry. Pure. Her face was a mask of concentration, her darkly ringed eyes tight and her jaw clenched as the power in the air began to stir the hair framing her face. She made another stroke with her reed and then another, until finally, her hand trembling, she finished.
The woman looked up at him as though she could see to the very heart of what he was. Every mistake he’d made. Every regret he bore day in and day out. Every fear. Every want. She looked into him and she knew them all.
And then, without warning, the woman dropped the reed and screamed as though she were being torn apart. The power swirling through the room swelled until there was only a furious roaring that felt as though it were bubbling up from the very heart of who Harte was. As though he had become her.
As she made the final stroke, the screaming was coming from deep within her and it was coming from outside of her as well. The world was roaring its warning, but she could not listen. She would not listen. She would finish what she had started, even as she felt herself flying apart, a sacrifice and an offering to the power that was the heart of all magic.
An offering that would transform her into something so much more.
Even as she felt the very core of who and what she was shattering, even as she felt the spaces within her swelling and splintering, she screamed again, clinging to the table as the power of the spell—her greatest and most awful creation—coursed through her.
He was coming. But it did not matter. He was too late.
Too late to stop her.
Too late to take the power that was held within the parchment and ink, the skins and blood that she had created. He had tried to steal this magic and make it his own, tried to dole it out for favor and power, to give it to those who had no right to touch it.
He was coming, and she would destroy him. She would rip the very stars from the sky if need be, but he would not triumph.
Traitor. Thief. He would die this night, and her masterwork would be safe.
But first . . . She took up one of the polished gems on the altar in front of her—a lapis lazuli—and focused her magic, pushing a part of herself into the stone. And then she took up another—malachite—and another, breaking herself apart so that she could become something more.
She took up the last of the five and felt herself splinter once more, divided and broken for some greater goal. As the stones began to glow, all at once the pain she had felt—the horror of unbecoming—ceased. She slumped over, catching herself on the table in front of her.
There was no time to rest. She moved quickly on unsteady legs as she placed the stones on the floor around the table. One by one, she positioned them around the outline of a perfect circle that had been drawn, even and balanced, to ring the table that held the Book.
She heard the sound of footsteps approaching and she turned. There was someone waiting in the shadows.
A man. An unseen face.
“Thoth,” she said, her vision red with hatred.
The man stepped from the darkness and into the light. His head was bare, the brown skin of his scalp shaved clean of any hair.
“I knew you would come.” Her voice was brittle in its accusation.
“Ah, Seshat . . .” He shook his head sadly. “Of course I came. I came to stop you from making a terrible mistake.”
Her lip curled. “Do you think you can? You’re nothing but a man.”
“They call me a god now,” he said with a soft smile.
“They’ll see the error in their judgment soon enough,” she said, coming around the table so that she was between the altar and the man.
“You can’t destroy the pages you’ve created, Seshat. You would be damning all of us.”
Her eyes were bright with anticipation. The fear, if it had been there to start with, was gone now. “Who said I want to destroy them?”
The air, hot and dry from the arid desert day, began to move, swirling around the altar, and the stones began to glow.
“Stop,” Thoth commanded.
But she wasn’t listening. The stones had become bright points of light, like stars that had fallen to the ground, and between them, the threads of being—the parts of the world that held chaos at bay—began to glow in strange, eerie colors.
“You tried to take what was not yours to have,” she said, laughing a high, strange laugh. She sounded manic, unhinged, even to her own ears. Hysterical in her glee, she walked toward him. “You thought that you could wield power, you who were not born to it? You will never again touch the heart of magic. And your followers will turn on you. They will tear you to shreds. And I will dance over your bones as they dry in the sun.”
The man, who had been wearing a look of horror, lunged for her, his face contorted now in rage.
She wasn’t ready for his attack. She clawed at him, her nails raking red trails across his face, but he was stronger, and in the end she tumbled back, through the swirling colors and glowing threads that formed a boundary line around the altar, screaming as she went.
“Demon bitch,” Thoth said, sneering at her as he wiped the blood dripping from his cheek. He looked at it with disgust and then he stepped toward her, approaching the line of glowing air but not coming close enough to touch it.
Inside the circle, her eyes were wide with panic. She was trapped, just as she’d intended to trap the secrets of magic. “What have you done?”
“I’ve used your own evil against you,” he said. “You thought you could take all the power in that book for yourself?” He shook his head as he took the sword from his back, its blade curved like a scythe.
Inside the circle, Seshat raged and shrieked like the demon he’d called her.
“You know my weapon, Seshat, don’t you? A knife made from the stars. Iron that fell from the sky.” He walked over to the first of the stones and lifted the blade. “Capable of severing anything.”
“No,” she screeched, her voice ripping through the chamber.
But there was nothing she could do. Thoth brought the curved blade down and the stone split in two, its separate halves going dark. In response, Seshat released a keening wail that contained all the pain—the fear—that she felt.
Thoth walked to the next stone. “You won’t be able to cause any more trouble,” he told her, bringing the blade down again. “You won’t be able to collect power for yourself any longer,” he said, destroying the third stone.
By now she’d crumpled to the floor and was trying to pull herself to the altar where the book waited. When she looked up, her vision was going black. The darkness seemed to be consuming her, consuming the world.
Thoth walked to the fourth stone, and when he destroyed it, her spine arched and she fell backward onto the floor. It was darkness now pouring from her mouth, filling the room along with her wailing. But she pulled herself up again and looked at Thoth, the darkness in her eyes a living thing.
“There is nowhere you can hide from me,” she told him. “I will find you, and I will tear apart the world to make you pay.”
When Thoth drove the blade into the fifth and final stone, Seshat screamed one last time, the darkness pouring out of her until there was nothing left. No body. No blood. No bones. Only the empty echo of her screams.