The sounds of clashing metal and wood woke Mereneith from her uneasy slumber. It was coupled with loud angry shouts drifting through the gaps between the sealed cell door and its sturdy frame.
Still not dead.
She painfully angled her head left and right, trying to figure out if anything had changed since the last time she was lucid.
Since Tiye left, things went quiet for a long time. Longer than she had expected. There were no new interrogations, no salt-laced whips and fire-hot brands—nothing. For brief moments, she even wondered if they had given up on her.
The answer was no.
The commotion from outside drew closer and closer, the fighting getting louder and louder, until it culminated in a deafening crash. Mereneith shut her eyes and jerked her head to one side as wooden splinters flew towards her like little pitchforks. The hinges of the cell door had been ripped off and the door itself lay collapsed at her feet. A dead body was sprawled on the ground, spread-eagled, a spear sticking out from the back.
Two men rushed into her cell, their faces masked by pieces of linen. They wasted no time in slashing the chains that kept her prisoner, and Mereneith felt her body falling like a limp rag doll. She was caught by the arms, one man on each side, and hauled towards the gaping doorway.
"Who are you?" she asked as they navigated her through a litter of bodies strewn along the narrow corridor. Guards lay in the mix, some of whom she recognised from the earlier episodes of torture.
The men didn't reply. They continued pressing forward, until eventually they emerged up a flight of stone steps and out into the open.
A gust of fresh air slammed into her face, leaving Mereneith reeling momentarily. After being locked with the stench of blood and rancidity for such a long time, she had almost forgotten what being alive was meant to smell like. She opened her mouth and gasped, inhaling as much of the balmy air as she could manage.
And then she was flung onto the ground.
She cried out as her lacerated knees struck the gravel, the tiny grains of sand and stone rubbing against those open wounds.
"This is as far as we've been asked to take you," one of the men said. He pointed in the direction of an amalgamation of rock-like structures in the near distance. "I would head that way if I were you. You have some time before they find out what's happened here."
Mereneith opened her mouth to ask more questions, but her two rescuers were already gone.
She picked herself off the ground and turned her head to take one final look at the prison she had escaped. It was an innocuous-looking building that could easily have passed as a traveller's rest stop. No one would have guessed that beneath those mud-slapped walls lay a hellish labyrinth that now lay claim to countless lives.
Gritting her teeth, she dragged her torn feet in the direction that the men had pointed her to. She didn't know if she could trust them, but if they helped to set her free then she was willing to take a gamble.
It wasn't long before the barren landscape evolved into something more sinister. Towering rock-like structures surrounded her, their twisted and gnarled surfaces reaching towards the skies like the arms and fingers of the wrongful dead. For the first time Mereneith was grateful for the pain that consumed her body, for it provided a welcome distraction to the shadowy surroundings.
She looked up to the night sky, following the constellations as best as she remembered and praying that it would lead her back to Memphis. What had happened in the capital since her capture? Was Kha safe? Were there any changes to the king's condition, or had Kanefer discovered what she had done in the palace?
The wounds that covered her body were slowly draining her of what little energy she had, and she was struggling to stay up on her two feet. It made the arrow she had taken to the shoulder back at Saqqara feel like child's play. She tripped on a protruding rock and stumbled, falling face-first onto the ground.
A glint of light against her right eye struck her like a bolt out of the blue.
Mereneith used her fingers to brush away the sand and gravel surrounding the little spark, until it was enough for her to dig out the mysterious object that had been buried underneath.
She stared at it in disbelief.
An Ak'heka crystal.
Not one that had been carefully grown and tended to within the Great Temple's crystal vault, but a crystal that had sprouted in the wild.
It was not unusual to find crystals in the open—after all, that was how the priests discovered them in the first place. There were dedicated mining areas across the kingdom where labourers were put to work sieving through the dirt to find crystals that would then be sent back to Memphis and used as fodder to grow more of them.
But those were always tiny fragments. Rough and uneven on all edges. Easily mistaken as mere pebbles and stones if one didn't look carefully enough.
This—the crystal she was holding in her hand—was nothing like that.
It was almost as large as a ripe fig, with smooth edges that looked as if they had been meticulously hewn by one of Memphis's best smiths. Holding it up against the moonlight, she could see the clarity of the stone as it refracted the gentle beams from above.
By all counts this would be considered a top grade crystal by the crystal keepers of the temple. Yet it had been nurtured purely by the forces of the earth—something that they had believed was impossible.
The luxuriant glow that the crystal was emitting left Mereneith mesmerised. There was a steady stream of warmth flowing from the crystal's surface to the palm of her hand, granting her comfort in her loneliness and destitution.
Turning her attention back to the unremarkable ground, she continued digging as her instincts told her to. Two, three, four, five—with each crystal she uncovered, a shocking realisation struck.
She had chanced upon an unusually fertile crystal mine, one that could easily outshine all the other existing mines across Upper and Lower Egypt. This arid, desolate site, home to petrified trees for possibly centuries, was also a point of concentration for the earth's energy.
Her thoughts drifted towards her designs and sketches, her plans to create a structure that could harness the full potential of the Ak'heka crystals and usher in a new era of prosperity for the people of the kingdom—not only the rich and powerful.
Ptah's blessings be upon me, for he truly listens to all prayers and is the begetter of all beginnings.
Clutching only the original crystal tightly in her hand, Mereneith quickly shovelled sand back over the others, burying them beneath the surface once more. She scrambled over to the nearest rock and scratched out the symbols of Ptah with the crystal's sharp point, so that she might be able to return one day. She had no means of transporting any more crystals back to Memphis and this was the last thing she wanted Kanefer and his cronies to discover, so this was the best she could do.
With renewed vigour, Mereneith plodded on.
#
The petrified forest that she had been traversing was more extensive than she expected. Mereneith had been lugging her sore frame along for hours, until the first rays of dawn began to crack through the clouds, but she had still not reached the end of the rocky plain.
Miraculously, the pain she had been experiencing seemed to have subsided significantly and some of the fresh, bleeding wounds had already started to form scabs.
Maybe the crystals work after all, she thought, a spark of optimism lighting up her mind.
The pounding of footsteps interrupted her thoughts. Pinpricks in the distance grew larger, until she could make out the frames of the litter bearers and the man they hoisted upon their shoulders. Her first instinct was to hide, but it was too late, for she had already been spotted.
"Mereneith?"
She blinked, squinting her eyes to get a better look at the man who had spoken. His voice was familiar—too familiar. A voice she had heard for so many years around the compound of the Great Temple, as rich and comforting as honeyed wine.
"Hem-netjer-tepi..."
It was High Priest Tjethy.
Relief washed over her, but it wasn't long before uncertainty and anxiety seeped in. Her fingers closed over the crystal a little more tightly.
"Goodness me. Look at the state of you," the high priest exclaimed. He gestured to his litter bearers to set him down when they came alongside her. "Whatever's happened?"
"Hem-netjer-tepi," Mereneith bowed, "I, I—"
Tjethy shook his head, bidding her remain silent. "We can speak when we get back to the temple. You are in no condition to do that now," he said. He issued a few instructions to his entourage and Mereneith was promptly helped onto the sedan chair. The litter was lifted back onto the shoulders of its bearers, who promptly set off at a brisk pace.
"Let me down! This sedan, I cannot—" Mereneith said, alarmed to find that the high priest was walking beside her, having given up his transportation.
Tjethy returned her protests with a smile. "All of us are equals in the eyes of the great Ptah," he said. "Rest. We are only at the outskirts of the capital and shall be back at the temple in no time." There was a firm insistence in his voice that left her no room for refusal.
Mereneith slumped against the backrest of the sedan in resignation. She shut her eyes so that she couldn't see the high priest by her side, striding casually with his usual easy charm. Tjethy was dangerous, she realised, because he could easily make you forget that he was.
#
"Nefermaat! Let me out of here!"
Kha pounded his fists against the locked door, shouting at the top of his lungs. He had been at it for so long that his bleeding knuckles had left bloody trails against the wood, but still the door remained firmly shut. For the past few hours, anger had been roiling inside him like a burgeoning wave, until it subsided into a quiet despair.
He sank down to the ground.
When he had heard that Mereneith had been captured, his first instinct was to march on Kanefer's residence and demand her release. Nefermaat had other ideas.
Besides locking him in this room, his brother had also stationed guards beneath every open window to prevent him from escaping. He was a prisoner.
Last night, Nefermaat had paid him a visit.
"Kha," his brother had said, "I'm only going to repeat this one last time. You know full well what'll happen if you show up in front of Kanefer. You'll be dead, and so will the girl. Instead of rescuing her, all you'll be doing is speeding up her death because she'll be useless to them then. Also, you'll be sacrificing Father's life, and the future of our kingdom. Are you sure that's what you want to do? Stop being a child."
He'd thrown a punch at the wall then, but had nothing except bruises on his knuckles to show for it.
The logical side of him knew that Nefermaat made perfect sense, but the emotional side could not let go of the knowledge that Mereneith was suffering in captivity somewhere. That final glance she gave him before she left Nefermaat's residence for the palace had been intentionally reassuring, yet she hadn't been able to disguise the slightest hint of fear that she hid inside.
I let her go. This is my fault.
His guilt continued to grow, twisting and turning in every crevice of his mind. What if Nefermaat was wrong and Mereneith was already dead? And if she wasn't, was he supposed to sit here and let hope slowly bleed dry? What if she was waiting for him but he never came?
A stream of memories that they shared started trickling into his mind. Practically a lifetime in the short span of a month.
He looked out of the window, staring up at the waning moon hanging in the sky—the grace of the goddess Nut casting a temporary blanket of calm to hide the turmoil that threatened the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt. It was a lie, an illusion he could not let himself believe, not when there was someone suffering in his stead.
The sands of time were ticking and with each moment wasted, Mereneith's chance of survival would slowly diminish. It had already been three days since her capture. Even if it meant walking up to the face of death, Kha could not shy away.
Yet he was helpless.
Once again, reality was reminding him of how weak and useless he was. Ornaments of gold that he dangled on his body did nothing to change that fact.
It was a wonder anyone even viewed him as a threat.
He raised his hand to bang on the door again, but before his curled fist could strike the wood, the door swung open. Kha lurched forward, sprawling awkwardly across the threshold.
Nefermaat took one glance at him and shook his head. He gave his younger brother a light kick with the tip of his sandal. "Get up," he said. "It's embarrassing having the servants see you in this dismal state. You need to get ready. We're leaving."
"Where to?" Kha asked, scrambling back up to his feet.
His brother waved a small sheet of papyrus in the air, then shoved it against his chest. "This was just delivered," Nefermaat said.
There was only one line written on the parchment.
Come to the Great Temple.
But it was the seal that was imprinted at the bottom-right corner of the sheet that left Kha stupefied. It was his father's cartouche. A seal that only the king himself could wield, for it was kept carefully hidden away from anyone who might seek to use the power of the throne for their own selfish means. No one knew where Sneferu kept his personal seal, not even his sons.
"Is this from Father?" he exclaimed.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Nefermaat replied. "But I suppose we'll have to go and find out."
#