The dry rustling of chitinous bodies filled the ante-chamber with an ominous buzz.
Far too many tiny feet were pattering against the glass as the quivering mass composed of thousands of pale insects was scrambling and crawling atop, around and below each other. Occasionally, brown pincers would show in one place while tails with yellow stingers surfaced in another. Once in a while a whole specimen appeared, only to skedaddle to safety among the wriggling sea of its mates. The glutinous smear of venom partially obscured the viewing pane which separated Trueth from Selket's finest.
As far as she was concerned, these blighters might as well squirt out more poison and conceal the rest of this mess. The sound effects alone were rubbing on nerve ends that were already raw.
Trueth turned her back on the bugs.
Through the lotus-shaped pillars on the other side of the room she could see the first rashers of dawn grilling in the early morning sun. A silly metaphor-there was not a single pig in sight in the whole of this version of ancient Egypt. Still, her rumbling stomach seemed to have a mind of its own, sending inappropriate smoke signals to a tired brain.
She had been waiting for over an hour, to judge from the amount of sand that had trickled through the timing device in the corner, and the good sisters had not seen fit to provide her with anything else than a carafe of water. As well as a tank full of scorpions.
The catering in the temple of Selket was not usually that bad, but serving cappuccino lattes to her followers was obviously not among Her Wisdom's key priorities. Also, these people-despite all their trading-knew neither coffee nor tea. Which made the high priestess hard-pressed to procure one key ingredient for Trueth's craving, even if there certainly was plenty of the other. Trueth conceded the popular drink of warm honeyed milk with aniseed would be preferable to the lukewarm water she had at her disposal-
'-Ey, pssst!'
Even in her semi-comatose state Trueth did not believe for one second the scorpions had gained swarm intelligence and were addressing her. The voice came from a human agent, one she was familiar with. One that belonged to her new family, to be more precise.
'What are you doing here?' Trueth addressed the second pillar to the left with a chilled tone that was unsuccessfully trying to mask the fact how pleased she was to hear this voice. Her delight was entirely unrelated to the pitcher of the milky drink Trueth had been fantasizing about which appeared to be hovering next to the stone colonnades.
Not the one with the extra caffeine. The one that was available to the inhabitants of this world such as herself.
'I thought you might be hungry and thirsty-and stuff,' Rani-Ra, her adopted sister said, as she emerged from behind the column. 'They tend to forget that sort of thing if one is not a patient.'
Rani-Ra poured some hot milk into the mug she held in her other hand and passed it to Trueth, who took a hearty swig. The pitcher hovered towards the nearest of the low wooden tables scattered around the room; there it landed with a clunk.
'Ouch, that milk is boiling.' Trueth aired her tongue, hoping this would take care of any potential blisters.
'Make sure Her Wisdom does not see you like that,' Rani-Ra giggled, as she stepped towards the tank with the scorpions and knocked on the glass.
'Stop that! You never know what these crawlies are up to. With all that poison, I'm sure they'll eat their way through eventually. Your, eh-our father keeps saying the ancient Egyptians did not really have sheets of glass like that. So if it doesn't exist, it's even easier to break, I suppose.'
'You're nuts,' Rani-Ra said dismissively and rapped on the pane again.
Trueth drank more of her milk. It was not exactly a stimulant, but the combination of calories and warmth gave her second wind.
'Phew. Do you have to do that?' Rani-Ra asked, flapping her hands in front of her face.
Trueth ignored her and instead asked. 'Why are you here? Ok, I'm very grateful you are but don't you have some training sessions to attend?'
Rani-Ra had shocked the members of the noble House of Suka when she had announced her intention to join Trueth as a healer in the temple of Selket, instead of becoming an initiate of Hathor, in the tradition of her ancestresses. Like her elder brother, Rani-Ra was a force of nature, albeit a more temperate one. She, therefore, had got her way without too much fallout. Her twin brother had instead followed the path of established practices and was studying as an initiate of Ra. He was traipsing in the footsteps of that particular older brother who had a position very few at his age could even dream to attain ... .
Trueth resolutely turned her thoughts away from this particular sibling.'If anybody catches you here, you are in trouble. '
'They tell me I AM trouble, so where's the problem?' Rani-Ra responded.
'Runs in the family. Still, it's enough if one of us gets shat upon from a great height, maybe you better make yourself scarce.'
'What have you done wrong now?' Rani-Ra asked.
'Eje is dead,' Trueth announced.
'And? The servants came here to die. That's not your fault?'
Before Trueth could grace Rani-Ra with a suitable response, the ornamental bronze double doors between the wall full of scorpions and the sunlit pillars opened, and a senior priestess emerged.
'Her Wisdom awaits you now, Sister Thueris,' she proclaimed.
As unobtrusively as possible, Trueth placed the clay mug with the dregs of her milk on one of the tables.Rani-Ra had vanished complete with her pitcher. Presumably behind the pillar which had sheltered her shapely form before, at least she was nowhere in sight.
Trueth passed a rectangular opening high enough to admit a giant and found herself in a circular room she had entered only once before, two months ago to be precise, when she had sworn the healer's oath to heal the infirm, to nourish the weak-
'-you lost the man entrusted to your care.' A calm voice interrupted Trueth's train of thoughts.
'Yes,' she responded. There was nothing else to say.
Only one thing to do, something she kept forgetting. Trueth bowed and at the last moment remembered to cross her arms in front of her chest.
'Your Wisdom.' She added for good measure. It helped to stick to protocol when dealing with beings who could pulverize you with a thought.Opposite Trueth, an angular figure swathed in diaphanous turquoise robes sat on a raised pedestal, her garments providing excellent camouflage in a room displaying so many shades of blue, it might as well have been under the surface of the sea.
Sit!
The command, together with the image of the mat right in front of her, materialised in Trueth's thoughts. Kneeling on the woven reeds, Trueth hoped the interview would not take too long. She was not used to crouching on the floor, and it would be embarrassing if her limbs went asleep again.
A jingle of ceremonial bangles indicated movement on the dais. The high priestess steepled her fingers. 'He was an old man. It would not have made much difference. Not this time. You tried hard. I absolve you from all guilt.'
What? That had gone much better than expected.
'Be aware, that your next patients will require all your skills.'
Trueth started to nod.
'I said all your skills. Your abilities encompass those talents you potentially possess. Those that will only come when you take the Blessing. I will give you another month to ponder about this. I had expected you would have taken your decision already. Yet you hesitate.'
'Eh yes. Being blinded is pretty-final.'
'You gain the sight of Beyond.'
'Yes. I know, Your Wisdom. I still find it very drastic. And I do have some other considerations.'
The first prophet of Selket never moved an eyebrow, she just kept staring beyond Trueth in that unnerving way they all had. 'One month. Then I want your decision, or you leave this temple.'
A hollow feeling of desperation was rising inside her. 'Your Wisdom-forgive me, you were the one to tell me I had a great gift I could already use to help others, and you wanted me to join. Not once did I regret doing so. The opposite is the case. I am very happy to be here. Healing is a vocation I did not even know I had.'
Trueth did not like the treble creeping into her voice. She folded her clammy hands. She might as well have been talking to a pyramid.
'This might be so. If you do not wish to realise your potential, I cannot keep you here. You can still marry and pass on your gift to your children. Or you join your people. I understand you might find our ways-alien.'
'Allow me a question, Your Wisdom, do the People of the Mist also have the Blessing?'
The haggard figure got up in a musical jingle and moved toward yet another two-dimensional copy of the resident celestial being. There she stopped and stayed. Unmoving. 'Not normally. But then they do not share our powers. A few of them came here, prayed to the gods and took the Blessing.'
That was interesting. The information, of course, was moot, given that the Kemet civilisation had not yet managed to make contact with these magical neolithic mist-dwellers she had yet to meet. Most of the other civilisations had come through and were accounted for. This achievement, of course, did not apply to anybody who might have played a role in her personal genealogy. Maybe by now she should be used to being the last of her kind.
On a second thought-Metjen had established that she had in fact been wrong. She was not the sole survivor of the European witches as she had thought before she met her Egyptian friends. There had been a few others. They were not strong, they supposedly did not come in large numbers-but according to what Metjen had found out they existed. What might have happened to those people they had all supposedly descended from was as yet unclear.
Typical. Trust her to draw the shortest straw. And now she was facing an ultimatum.
Trueth could not blame the high priestess, she had been fair and supportive, but she had principles to maintain, and a rogue healer among their numbers was not something this ultra-conservative community would accept.
Her Wisdom still faced the wall. An image of Iseret rose in Trueth's mind. She had been so much shorter, tiny even. Still a force to be reckoned with, a force who had started her on her new career. If only she could find a way to continue.
You may go. Think well before you take your decision. It would be appreciated if you joined the sisters. The ethereal voice of another high priestess shook Trueth out of her daydreaming.
She nodded, bowed once more and withdrew, indecision making her queasy. Or maybe that came from the milk. Lactose intolerance had always been a big story in her family.
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Image is taken from DeviantArt, 'He had always hated milkshakes' by SKOpseudonym