Shadow of Ararat

THE FATHER OF RIVERS

The smile of Ra glittered back from the slow current of the river. The prow of the little ship cut through long troughs of deep-green water, spray falling back in languid waves from the pitted wood and tarred rope dangling from the front of the boat. Dwyrin’s legs kicked idly inches from the swirling brown and green surface. The heat of the god was a heavy blanket upon him. His eyes were closed but the meditation of the masters had overtaken him and he saw the land sliding slowly past as a flickering vista of deep russet color and strong deep-blue currents under the earth. One hand rested lightly on a trailing guyline, feeling the sinuous flex of the boat moving through the water flow back into his fingers. The footsteps of the crew on the deck trickled over his hand like rain spilling from the rope, itself a musty deep green.

Three days now the dhow had followed the father of rivers north, winding past the sunken tombs and the deserted, dead cities of the Old Kingdom. League after league of desert paced them, spilling down to the edge of the river, washing around the towns on the eastern bank and the narrow strips of cultivation that supported them.

Two weeks had flown past since the early-morning dream of the crane-headed man, weeks spent in close seclusion with Nephet. The little old man had shown him marvels and delights, ripping back the veils of ritual and ceremony around the path of the sorcerer. Dwyrin had been afraid at first, realizing that he was being inducted into mysteries that were denied to even the journeymen of the school. Secrets of fire, wind, and the slow hard energy of the earth were revealed. There was a constant hissing current of power that ran in the back of his mind now, occasionally leaking into his consciousness like’the calling of many invisible birds. During-the day he struggled to keep his vision clear of the shimmering coils of power that slithered and shifted within the captain and the sailors. The deck and rigging of the dhow had an unfortunate tendency to melt away, leaving him staring down into the surging blue-green deeps of the river at the flickering bright flashes of the fish within it.

After six days of travel the river began to swell, spreading out. The high hills that had bounded it from the narrows at Tel-Ahshar now fell back to the horizon. The fields grew, reaching back from the river. More boats began to appear, filling the waterway. Sleek long galleys passed them in either direction, the heaving backs of the rowers glittering with sweat under the eye of Ra. Towns grew more frequent and great ruins began to crowd the western bank. Barely a league passed without the stark white bones of palaces, temples or tombs rising above the olive trees and palms.

On the ninth day the dhow pulled ashore for the night just beyond a thriving village on the eastern shore. The captain and the crew tied the boat to a piling of stone jutting from the bank, and all the crew save one went off, laughing, toward the lights of the town. Dwyrin stood on the high raised deck at the back of the dhow, staring after them, seeing them shimmer and waver between the cool purple-blue of the sleeping trees. He blinked and the vision settled back, flickering, to the dimness of the starlight and the thick cane breaks that lined the shore. The sole crewman left behind settled onto a mat near the steering shaft at the end of the deck. Soon he nodded off.

For a long time Dwyrin sat in the darkness, feeling the river and the land breathe around him, his mind and eyes filled with the whispering of the wind, of the rocks and trees that lined the shore, the slow glittering passage of crocodiles in the deep water. As Neket the guardian of night rose in the west, Dwyrin slid entirely out of conscious thought. The thin walls that he had raised up to constrain his vision fell away entirely, leaving his ka floating in air above his now-recumbent body.

The land was filled with dim radiance, the trees, palms, and brushy undergrowth damped down by the flight of Ra into the underworld. In the fields beyond the boat, sullen red flames marked the cattle asleep under the swaying trees. Dwyrin spun slowly up into the air, seeing the land in slumber, even the deep currents of the earth muted. The river itself rolled on into the north, filled with green radiance and slow pulses of blue-violet. He turned to the western shore.

There he recoiled, his ka shying back from a cold white radiance. Beyond the line of palms and tall sawgrass on the farther shore a rising mount, crushed in on one side, flickered and burned with a pearlescent light. Around and about the hill a great city lay, outlined in silver and white. Dwyrin garbed himself in the aegis of Athena, his mind tumbling over the weaving spell. Those parts of himself that had begun to fray and slide away in that harsh glare returned. He drifted forward over the river.

At the western shore he paused, the aegis beginning to buckle under the constant pressure of the light. Dwyrin settled within and drew down on the surging current of the river, filling himself with the slow solid power of Hapi, the father. The aegis expanded, blunting the light. In his heart Dwyrin smiled and flexed, surging across the elemental barrier at the edge of the river. He stepped over, halting in shock as his sandaled foot crunched on gravel. He looked down, his hands raised to his face in amazement. Strong and broad, they rose before him. A kilt of pleated white linen was bound around his waist, his feet in fine leather sandals. The heavy weight of a short stabbing sword hung at his waist. He shook his head, feeling long braids fall behind him. He reached back and fingered his hair. It was bound back by a fillet of metal.

Softly he padded forward through the trees and came to a broad avenue. Startled, he looked back to the river, seeing a broad piling bounded with obelisks running out into the water. He swung back the other way, spying a long curving road rising up toward the slumped mountain. Sphinxes and lions paced the sides of the road, and his feet were swift upon it. He came to a great arch, carved with the faces of kings and gods. He paused under it, his hand pale against the dark golden stone. Beyond the arch, great temples rose up on either side. Between them ran a narrow street of flagstones. Beyond the temples and their vast array of pillars, the slumped mountain now rose up with great clarity. Dwyrin could now see that it was stepped, and rose in tier after tier of hewn granite and sandstone to the summit, where a full third had been caved in, as by some massive stroke.

Dwyrin stepped through the arch and was brought up short. He reeled back, his body stunned by a stinging blow. A figure now stood beyond the gate.

“This is not for you,” grated a voice like a millstone. “Go back to the land of the living.”

Dwyrin, blinded by the glare seeping from the mountain, shook his head and stepped forward again. The figure raised a huge hand, its fingers curled. The shape of it was indistinct, fuzzed at the edges, but Qwyrin, blinking, made out the head of a wolf and deep burning red eyes. The hand rose, fingers outstretched. There was a slow burring sound and Dwyrin felt himself come apart, limbs dissolving. There was a sharp popping sound.

Dwyrin awoke on the deck of the dhow, the clamor of the sailors harsh in his ears. They had returned from the village, heads thick with wine and fermented corn ale. He rolled aside as their guttering blue flames sprawled around the pale-yellow flow of the decking. Dwyrin shuddered, closing his eyes against the sight. It did no good. No, if anything, his othersight was clearer and stronger. A yellow-blue flame approached him and low musical tones belled from it, hanging in the air like falling rain. Dwyrin groaned and rolled over, his distress spilling to the slow yellow deck in dull purple streams. The yellow-blue flame turned away. Dwyrin lay in the spreading pool of purple.