Metjen felt like slamming a door shut. Any door would do.
But there was only a stupid gilded curtain that swished from left to right without providing a satisfying sound. Given the lack of noise, he needed to find another outlet for the heat still bubbling inside his body. He stretched out his hand and directed his power towards the wooden water buckets standing at the rear of the bathing stall. With a whoosh, the buckets blew up; splinters of wood followed by a scorching fog rolled towards him. Metjen jumped backwards, stomped into his sitting room and threw himself on the heap of velvety cushions.
What am I doing here?
On the other hand, people with his skills had not exactly been thriving in his old world either. Horror movies and fantasy novels were occupying their space. The only really scary critters had been the members of his family —as well as a few other magical beings scattered all over the world. Until he met Trueth, of course.
Fog drifted by, carrying along the odour of woodfires.
Of course, Metjen conceded, there had been the demons. They tended to get ignored, only the effects of their efforts showed all too well.
He should be so happy at having found beings who shared his talents. In a world ruled by his kind. Instead he was—what? An embarrassment? Lethal? Probably both.
Something cold and wet nudged his bare ankles; he turned over and faced Mish-Mish. The cat stalked towards him across the cushions, owl-like golden eyes beaming from a face covered in tangerine fur. He grabbed his feline companion, pressed his cheek into treasured silkiness and felt Mish-Mish launch a therapeutic purr.
Once the cat had settled on his lap, Metjen pressed his fists into his forehead. This could not continue.
Need to talk to Imhotep.
He snorted. Before arriving here, he had been a leader in his own right. Maybe he had not been entirely successful. Maybe he had been spectacularly unsuccessful—he had lost far too many of his people during that last stand at the portal. But he had done his duty. All he could do here was to dance to his ancestor's tune.
And he did not even know what it was gramps was orchestrating this time round. Thinking about it, Imhotep had been pulling his strings even before they ever met.
Gods, I hate that!
Metjen carefully placed the cat on a pillow and retreated towards the second room of relief. He ripped off his robe, grabbed another bucket and splashed cold water all over his upper body. The mirror above the table supporting the water basin reflected every single one of his movements. If he were a character in a novel, this would be the place and time to be noticing his eyes—hazel, with an empty expression. He would be admiring his wavy dark hair, his well-built upper body, and he would be doing so solely for the enjoyment of his readers. Female readers, mostly.
This is no novel. This is real.
He did not care about his physiognomy; it might have got him plenty of nookie, yet it had never got him a decent relationship. The one person who loved him he could not love back. In any case, romance was the last thing on his mind right now.
This has got to end.
Having dressed, Metjen shoved yet another glittery curtain aside and returned to the living room. The fussy furnishings was another reason he could not stand this place, how he wished he had at least brought some rock posters with him. When he passed the pillows, he found Mish-Mish and Blondie curled up in two neat heaps of fur, breathing softly next to each other. He tiptoed past them and carefully closed the door to his condo.
Miles of staircases, courtyards and corridors later, Metjen learned that Imhotep was not in his private suite; instead he was conversing with the holy circle in his audience chamber. The Lord did not wish to be disturbed, the long-nosed personal assistant informed Metjen in a tone that barely stayed on the right side of polite.
'I will wait in the ante-room then,' Metjen said.
The assistant had no choice; he bowed him in and clicked the door shut. Metjen conducted a quick mind-scan of a place he had never been in before. It was tasteful but curiously devoid of colours, sporting white walls, white pillows and baskets, just a couple of blue glass vases planted with papyrus stood at the rear. They were colour-coordinated with the rest of the decorations: A single turquoise band ran along the walls just under the lofty ceiling. The windows on one side faced an open courtyard displaying the same stark design.
He heard voices accompanied by beams of pale light flickering through a slit in the curtain. A white curtain, of course. A tinny spiced odour accompanied the glints, the smell of high magic. It would not be wise to get closer, if Imhotep didn't want to be disturbed, he was likely to have cursed the curtain. Everything could happen.
The light continued to flicker through the slit; painting odd shapes onto the ceiling, luring him closer.
Metjen peeped through the fabric.
He spotted another, larger, room with the same minimalist design as the ante-chamber. Unfurnished, except for a ring of bare earth in the middle, the room was almost too large for its single occupant. Imhotep, wearing only a short white shendyt around his pale midriff, had his feet planted solidly on the ground and was talking to—nobody.
Or maybe not.
The flickering brightness that had lured Metjen closer originated from the middle of the earthen ring. Metjen had to concentrate hard to notice the faces in the iridescence. Faces of people he knew, all of them members of the holy circle. The whole set-up reminded him somehow of a teleconference. As well as something else.
Wow, this puts the holodeck on the Enterprise to shame!
Imhotep pulled up his feet and kneeled in the air. The images vanished and with them the voices. Metjen jerked backwards.
'Why are you hiding behind the drapes? Come,' Imhotep said from next door.
Metjen exhaled. 'Hard to keep anything from you.' He moved towards the hard packed earth in the middle of the room and stomped his feet on the ground. Nothing happened.
Imhotep hovered towards the side, grabbed a linen cape from a hook and swung it over his shoulders. 'Hiding anything from me is almost impossible, I would say. At least, it was until recently.'
'What do you mean?' Metjen asked.
Imhotep sighed. 'The possibilities have gone vague. It is hard to work out what might be happening. I could not establish what your family will encounter in the palace, to give you one example. For which reason I did not want them to go. However, I had no choice.'
'The dark priests?'
'Most likely, yes.' Imhotep put his feet back on the ground and strode into the courtyard, motioning for Metjen to follow him. 'Those members of the circle I trust do not know either what will come to pass, but the omens are all—bad. We are blind in the face of oncoming disaster.' The gauzy curtain framing the yard fluttered out of his way and Imhotep crossed the shady colonnades, into the sunlit yard.
The translucent fabric softly swished back into place, obscuring Metjen's vision. He pushed it aside with one hand and flip-flopped across the flagstones.'Maybe it's all my fault.'
His ancestor had sat down on the rim of the reflection pool, trailing his hands through the water. Metjen could not understand how the man could be so calm. His revelation sounded catastrophic. Yet, all he did was sit there and let the water trickle from his hand.
Imhotep flicked his fingers spraying droplets onto the lily pads of the basin. 'Self-flagellation will get you nowhere.'
Metjen sat down next to him. 'I would leave if I could, but the portal is sealed forever.'
'Leave to go where? To the world of your birth? Full of demons and empty of people with sun-flow? Why would you want to be there?'
Metjen shrugged. 'There is no point in this debate. The portal is sealed.'
'It should be, yes. Pray, tell me—what did you do to secure it?' Imhotep's gleaming eyes stared beyond him without any visible sign of compassion or concern.
'I called your name and screamed that the fucking light should be turned out. It worked.'
Imhotep said nothing.
'Let me guess, that was wrong,' Metjen said.
His grandfather got up and sauntered towards the other end of the courtyard, opened an amphora and poured wine into two white alabaster goblets.
'We did not have much to go on,' Metjen said.
'I am surprised you made it at all. I never thought it would take that long. So much got lost. 'Imhotep offered him one of the beakers and Metjen took a sip. His grandfather arranged his legs in a lotus position in mid-air and Metjen followed suit. He wasn't in Rome but he might as well respect the local customs.
Imhotep swirled the wine in its vessel. 'The gateway is not sealed properly. This is why we do not only have dark priests here where we should not have them and undesired phenomena that cloud our vision. We also have demons banging on the portal. They will get through eventually, unless we seal the access for good. Or at least in such a way, that they cannot get through.'
'How?'
'Where is the wig?' Imhotep put his wine aside and once more focussed his burning gaze on Metjen.
'What?'
Far away, outside the courtyard, voices carried on the still air of the afternoon, floating in through the rectangle of sky above them. Some procession was going past; the chanting competed with the pinging of cymbals.
'You must have worn the wig. The divine light would never have found you otherwise, and the device of life would have remained inert.'
Metjen remembered their heirloom. A frizzy piece of messy false hair. Hacked in half. The other half they had discovered in the tomb of his ancestress Amasis, Imhotep's daughter.
The singing, pinging and praying seemed to get closer.
'I...don't know.' Images arose in Metjen's mind. The portal. The demons. Iseret. Trueth and Seisi. They had fought and kept darkness at bay, Trueth had been wounded, they had dragged her into that ring of light in the wall. The wig... . 'It slipped off my head as we went through.'
The chanting had stopped, somebody appeared to be talking instead.
'Then the demons have it.' Imhotep sipped his wine.
Metjen recoiled and nearly fell off his lofty perch. 'They can use it to get in? How can you just sit here and enjoy your drink?'
'Things are as they are. I have to work with what I have. As to your question, no they cannot enter so easily, but we also cannot use the wig anymore to keep them out. We need something else to seal the breach between the worlds. Where is the holy oar?' Imhotep asked.
The chanting had started again; it sounded much closer now. Metjen could smell incense and decided that rattling sistra were indeed the most annoying of instruments. Imhotep did not seem fazed at all.
'The what? We have the scarab ring. We brought it with us.'
'The ring is not what we need. It is too mundane.'
'My family tends to stick their oars in all the time, but not the way you mean.'
'This is most deplorable. We left some holy objects behind, hoping some of them would remain. If you know of only one, the wig you lost, then this is—not good.' Imhotep put aside his wine.
'Can't we just conjure up some new ones? Magical condoms or cursed sandals come to mind.'
A tic started in the corner of Imhotep's eye. 'For certain, you are most vexing. Whatever vessel we choose to spell, we cannot be certain it will perform its duties, not with a member of the circle gone over to the other side. We need one of the old ones.'
Imhotep pointed his bony finger at Metjen. 'Before I tell you more, I need you to understand. I am not well pleased with you. Your attitude is one thing. You also need to find equilibrium or you will get the house of Suka into even more difficulties. I do not expect you to be like me, not at your age. But you are spinning out of control. Your powers are very strong. Unusually strong. In the whole history of the temple, only a few priests of your years had that much sun-flow, and they all faced difficulties. Many—succumbed. The remaining two went to the universe to become high priests.'
Somebody banged on the big bronze door that sealed the access to the palace. Metjen listened closely but heard nothing else.
Imhotep was wrinkling his forehead. 'This is most peculiar. I cannot behold any possible future for you.'
'Well, you said yourself just now the circle is suffering from trouble vision.' Metjen winced. He might have gone a bit far given what he had just been told. 'Excuse me, I found your comment a bit strange.'
Imhotep was rising slowly in the air, an expression of concern on his face. 'Even if we can no longer read them, the possibilities are there. In your case there is nothing. This is most unusual.' He shook his head and muttered to himself. 'No, not there either.'
'What?'
Imhotep's features slowly froze and he seemed to observe the ground at Metjen's feet . 'I am reading the scrolls, looking at the possibilities, and speaking to my friends in the circle. I see only emptiness.'
'You can do all that? All at once? Cool, magical multitasking. I'd love that.' Metjen thought he heard chanting again, much closer than before.
'To do this, you would have to become high priest. Believe me, you would not survive the ceremony, you are much too vulnerable. Your ba would be annihilated! Of the young ones, only Iseret came back. As once did I.' Imhotep raised his head.
Some argument had erupted outside Imhotep's private suite. The singing had stopped. Instead, a multitude of voices appeared to be reciting prayers. Why were these mysterious buggers being so noisy?
Suddenly, Imhotep's eyes focussed on Metjen, the pupils shrank to a pinpoint and disappeared until only silvery balls of white light bore into his soul. The expression on his grandfather's face changed from bland to confused to horrified in the split of a second. He dropped back down onto the ground.
Now I behold their plan. It is too late. You are doomed!
'Come again?'
'Your Wisdom?' The attendant had slipped through the curtain.
'The servants of Ra have arrived. They are seeking the young lord.'
'What have I done now?' Metjen swallowed to moisten a throat that had gone rather dry all of a sudden.
'I did not anticipate this at all!' Imhotep's pupils had returned to normal, his expression had not. 'You cannot prevail.'
Metjen landed with a thump. 'Who's after me now? I knew they would try to pin the murder on me!'
Imhotep only shook his head.
Clanging, chanting and praying came from the anteroom and thick clouds of incense rolled through the curtain.
Imhotep's expression changed to pity. 'This is what they planned all along. Your ba will dissolve, leaving nothing behind. Your fall will bring shame to the house of Suka, weakening us. We will no longer count. Now I understand it all. Now, when it is too late.'
A throng of priests, let by Ptahmes, spilled into the courtyard on a cloud of holy smoke. Metjen felt a buzzing in his head, making it hard to hear the words oozing from Ptahmes' oily face.
'Congratulations, Golden One. You have been chosen to be the next high priest of Ra. Assuming you survive the universe. Which I doubt you can.' Hands grabbed for him, reverent hands, yet still unyielding. Metjen tried behold Imhotep, to reach out for help as they dragged him away.
His ancestor was a stone statue facing Ptahmes, who was no longer grinning.
He was laughing outright.
If you liked this story, please leave me a vote or a comment. Or both XD. Wattpad writers write for feedback. We thrive on it! Thank you so much. If you REALLY liked it - maybe you can tell your friends about it?
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Dedicated to rosannaPatruno and her 'Podestaria'. Another really unusual take on witches, fantasy novels - and magical education. I thought you might appreciate the drama in this chapter.