The Yoke of Hathor

The rider paused when the city of Thebes came into view-it was much the same as when he had last seen it. She had been alive then-no. Perhaps she had already been killed. He would have remained, but Methos had dragged him from there, promising him that revenge would come at a later time. It never had. But at the very least, he could fulfill his damn promise and end the curse before it drove him out of his mind.

He almost felt naked without the rest of them, but it was far, far better that no one knew. Silas and Caspian would never understand, and Methos-who alone went with him to Kemet in the first place-would understand only too well and shame him about it. There was a thing he would not allow. And so Kronos had traveled this way on the false premise of following some new challenge, it being much easier to say that, than that he left to burn his wife's corpse.

That was a thing he would need to explain, and he was certain it could not be explained. What he was certain of, however, was that he would get some peace if he did the deed.

Her name-she had never told him her name, but said that she had no name to give a man who wouldn't give his own. When he said his name was "Kronos", she told him her name was "Sekhmet". "A god for a god-is that not well enough?" And it was well enough, because he expected only to use her for was she seemed good for. He had never expected to feel anything but pleasure from either her caresses, or her dying, but she hadn't made it as simple as that.

It was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, he learned that nothing was ever simple with a witch.

****

Ah, what she was good for, though. A woman trained from youth in the carnal arts, brought to warm the bed of Ramses, her hands could even kindle fire in those eighty-year old limbs-why not bring to an inferno the passion of a healthy man who had seen twelve centuries go by? Certainly, she made nothing of it, but that she preferred Kronos' scars to Rameses' wrinkles. And that was what had appealed to him about her-a heart of ice wrapped in a flame. Were she a man, were she Immortal, she might have been formidable. Her hands could just as easily tend to a wound as scourge a slave-and it seemed she saw no difference in anything she did, nor in what was done to her, taking a slap and a kiss with the same passive face, as if for her years she had seen as much as himself.

Of course, she ruined it, as women ruin anything. The stupid whore must have fallen in love. That was the only explanation he could think of. She had fallen in love with him. And that was why she performed the rite of Hathor.

What had he been expecting when she brought the knife and the rope to the bed where he lay? What he had come to expect with Sekhmet, something unexpected and strange, but he expected sex alone, or that and whatever whims possessed him when confronted with the tools she'd brought him. Perhaps she had finally expected to be dispatched, and was only inviting him to do the deed. But he had not known what to make of it when she bound his hand to hers, wrapping the cord at the wrists.

"I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," she said, intoning the words in a way that made the hair stand up on his neck. "I have the power to be Reborn. I am the Beginning and the End of Time."

He had heard those words before, but they were uttered by an old, old Immortal, for whom they seemed a battle cry, a promise for eternal fight. In her mouth, they seemed a promise of another kind-but of what? And then she picked up the blade. For an instant, he thought she meant to skewer him with it, but then she laid open her palm.

"My brother Merneptah spoke to me today. He is aware of what you are, he said. Word was brought to him by Akhmose, his vizier…of the people you are from."

He watched the blood drip from her hand as she spoke. She continued speaking, as if she felt nothing, and the look in her eyes was sincere. There are many reasons to doubt the sincerity of a woman, but a woman who is bleeding and tied to you seems more resolute than most. And he knew the people of which she had been speaking. From the time of Rameses' death, there had been incursions by people from the West-in fact, people rather like himself. In fact, Methos and himself had conspired with them. He had no love of cities or kingdoms.

"I pledge myself to you, Kronos. To keep them from finding you, killing you. But in return, pledge yourself to me." And with that, the woman cut his hand. He swore as his blood flowed, and she clutched his palm, holding it to her own.

"We are of one blood. I just ask that you leave. Leave me alive-leave Thebes. Or…take me from here." And there her voice broke as she saw that he had healed. The knife dropped. She nearly leapt, pulling his arm with her, and tearing at the cord with her other hand. "What are you?" she exclaimed, having wrenched herself free of him.

"What do you think, you mad witch?" he exclaimed. He made to strike her with the hand recently healed, but she caught it, staring into the palm. The look on her face was such that he felt no need to attempt another blow.

"Perhaps you did not lie when you gave me the name of a god. How I have erred." And with that, she bitterly wept, collapsing on the floor. He thought to leave, but the sight of her tears moved him to stay, as he recalled the use he had for her. He pulled her to her feet.

And in a rush she explained that they were yoked. She, mortal. He, what he was. That what happened to one affected the other-and as she had no fate but to die, the consequences could be grave. He laid her down on the bed, and, weak with emotion, she gave no protest, but made him swear--*swear *--that he would not allow her to be interred after the manner of her own people, but to be burned. She made him swear by the blood that flowed through them both. And to make her stop talking, he swore.

Had he only listened, he'd have been better off. Had he only returned at once to burn her once he'd heard she'd been killed. That was why he felt almost driven to do it now.

****

He knew that the city could not have changed so much that he would not find where she was entombed. She had shown him those tombs, in that long ago time. She tried to hide him there, as if among the dead, they would not be found. She showed him what she faced, there.

"I do not expect to live this life much longer-what I do is treason," she had explained. "And yet, I was a…favorite. Once. No mean person. My mother and myself were the children of Rameses. I can not think that they would do anything but the proper services by me, and yet-it would be a horror. For I know two things. I can not wish to be preserved in this….shell! And if I am to be…" She touched his face as she paused, trying to find the words. She found no words to say, other than repeating, "We are yoked. We share the same blood-and fate."

When he looked on the faces of the dead of Kemet-the carefully wrapped corpses preserved for eternal life, he understood her horror. But when the soldiers pulled him away in the morning-there was nothing that could be done. Not once he had been strapped to a tree in the hopes that he would give up what he knew of their enemies, left hanging until Methos brought him down.

It was six hundred years, and still she would visit him in his dreams. Pleading. Coaxing. At times, she would appear as he remembered her best, her skin tanned gold from the sun, and her hair shining like the mane of Seth, her eyes two turquoises, faded by the light. She would come to him with bangles of gold on her arms, and a dress of gauze so that he could see all her charms on display. And yet, the gauze turned to cerement cloth in his fingers, death's linens, and he would awake with the kiss of a dead woman on his lips.

It had to cease.

****

Nightfall came-for only under the cover of darkness would he dare try to breech the tomb, being one man and alone. The part of the city in which her tomb was to be found, however, seemed seedier than before, and the tomb in disrepair-abandoned. Perhaps none had been there recently. He approached, and then felt a hand touch him.

"Greek?" a voice whispered. "What are you?"

It was a young boy. Kronos shook his head in annoyance. "I am no Greek. Have you no mother calling after you? Surely, she should be concerned about you wandering the street to be slain by the creatures of the night."

"My mother sleeps with Greek sailors-I could take you to her," the boy laughed, and then ran off.

"Come back here!" Kronos said in a loud whisper. The boy returned, reluctantly.

"You are no Greek. You probably have no money, either."

A happy image of the boy lying on his mother's bed with a snapped neck crossed Kronos' mind for an instant, but he put the thought aside. "You approached me for a reason," he said, firmly.

The boy's dark eyes darted in each direction, and then, more apprehensively, in the direction of the tomb.

"You came too close to that place…those tombs…I know songs come from there."

"Songs?"

"She sings…"

"Who sings?" Kronos demanded, feeling a sense of rage building.

"I don't know…I was telling a story! There's nothing to steal there…my brother, I could tell you…"

He walked away from the boy, who followed him.

"My brother knows some people who sell scrolls to Greeks-not bad money. But that place…"

He pushed the boy down, who burst into tears, before picking himself up and running away. But he called over his shoulder.

"I told you! By the gods, I told you!"

And Kronos continued on his way.

****

He held a torch by the door, but saw that it had been broken into before. It gave way with the push of a sword. Hearing a sound, a scratching sound, however, he drew back, wondering. But it would be nothing. It could be nothing. He made his way down the stairs, and then felt something against his foot. He imagined it to be a bundle of rags, until he brought his torch near to it. It lay, face down, as if someone had collapsed in trying to crawl up the stairs. A bony hand, a light gauze clinging to it, protruded in an attitude of reaching upward.

He stooped down to touch the body, but paused to take a better look.

It was a body. Beads clung to the cloth around it, and the linens were torn and black with age. He could only just make out enough of the form to see what it was, but something about the pattern of the beads-in the shape of a lion's face.

Sekhmet. He touched the thing.

How could a thing seem cold and yet so warm! The surface yielded but did not yield, and he reminded himself of how they preserved them-the bodies. Taking out the organs. Stuffing the crevices. Treating the skin, almost in the way leather was tanned. A dead body on the battlefield might at least be stripped clean and white down to the done by dogs and birds. But this…

He had seen the face of death before. Turning over the body, he saw death in a face he could still tell was her face. Not even thinking, he cradled the thing in his arms, barely wondering how it had come to be lying there. His hand touched the cloth that still clung to her face. It was wrinkled and pulled at, as if something had worked at it. And he was possessed with the urge to see.

Her features had been strong: those, she had told him, she inherited from her father. He continued, fascinated. What would it hurt to see? See what she was now. Her mouth had always tasted slightly of herbs, almost like incense. Alone of those of Kemet he had known, she eschewed garlic, claiming to hate the odor-saying it made her not wish to make love. And her lips had been full-rose petals. And that hair. A shame she would wear wigs to cover with ebon her copper glory. He was about to lift away the wrappings…

And then he felt a breath against his hand. In the flickering light from the torch, her face almost seemed to move underneath that last layer of cloth. He blinked. An illusion, nothing more. He had seen corpses swell in the heat. He had seen men loose the content of their bowels hours after death had taken them. Why shouldn't a dry husk rattle? And then he heard a voice-in his head, and not in his head.

"You returned."

His hand paused. Did he wish to tear back the last veil and see the dead woman as she really was?

"I told you we were yoked."

Yoked to this? He knew the lips moved then, and he knew because his face had come closer to hers. He remembered how she was. Her skin was gold, but seemed even in this light to have darkened.

"Release me."

And then the hand moved-no, the * claw * moved, the outstretched, stiff thing that still seemed to reach. The fingers slowly spread themselves, and he could see her palm. No cloth covered that-a puckered line revealed the scar that remained from where she'd drawn her blood. Stunned, he rose, letting the body settle back to where it had rested on the stairs, but now, face up. And still, the face seemed to be moving, under the cloth.

Kronos, Horseman, Killer of thousands, A destroyer of villages and tribes, dropped his torch on the body and fled.

Once outside of the tomb, he turned around, just able to see the flicker of the flames. Her words came back to him.

"Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow."

Something told him that though he had done the deed, it might not be quite over. But he ran into the night, found his horse, and discovered other nightmares.

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