The door slammed shut behind Metjen with a bang that reverberated through the house. Inside, the air was pleasantly cool and the familiar scents of his home wafted into his nose. Baking, cooking, dusty old tomes--Metjen gagged, his sister's cloying perfume--and a faint whiff of cat's piss. As if on cue, a clomping noise in the wooden stairwell indicated that Blondie was on his way, his food radar in full search mode. The cat sauntered across and stretched himself to his full height up Metjen's leg.
'Ouch!' He dropped his bags on the floor and removed the claws hooked into his jeans. Metjen fondled the beast's ears and turned his attention to Blondie's Persian mate, who had sneaked up on him in proper feline fashion. 'Hello Mish-Mish.'
A trilling came from the kitchen. 'Come kitty, kitty--food is ready!'
Two tails, one striped, one a feathery tangerine mop, whizzed down the corridor. His mother emerged from the kitchen the boys had just disappeared into, wearing a plastic hood on her head and carrying a tray in her hands. Dark red trickles were inching their way down her neck.
'Why are you still doing this yourself?' Metjen asked.
'The hairdresser never gets it right, dear.'
She did not either. He hugged her anyway, carefully edging past the tray full of delicacies she still balanced in front of her. 'What's it going to be this time?'
'I'm going back to my natural colour, maybe some mahogany thrown in.'
Good—the bottle blond had not worked with those hazel eyes. They radiated a determination that reminded him of Iseret, but only a bit. Mother did not care for lofty goals but a lot about things like fairness and the balance of the Maat.
'You have a couple of hours before dinner, dear,' she said. 'The twins arrived yesterday, but we wanted to wait for you.'
There would be no welcoming dinner if the family was not complete. Ever. His heartbeat slowed and his mood lifted. He was home. That was all that counted.
'Take this,' his mother said pushing the platter at him. 'I know you are ravenous when you come back from that place.' She pulled a face while Metjen placed the tray on an antique table covered in a butterfly flurry of yellow post-it sticks. He tore off a piece of fluffy flatbread, dunked it into the hummus and savoured its taste. From the corridor sounded padding and the next thing he saw was a beige paw with tufts between the claws exploring the edge of the table.
Metjen's mother grabbed a meatball and dropped it onto the floor. 'The poor kitty, he's hungry.'
'He's always hungry, when he isn't asleep. One of the two usually applies.' Metjen loved the ginger beast, but he was getting rather too large. Mish-Mish was a lot more particular about his food and would not have survived outside his home—unless the mice arrived cooked, preferably in a sauce.
Metjen went for the vegetables, this time dipping into the eggplant paste.
'Tell me, what is her Madness up to now?'
Metjen nearly choked on a grilled pepper. 'Mother be careful!'
She regarded him with an inscrutable expression on her face. 'Iseret is reading your mind, then?'
'No,' he said. 'That would be beyond rude. I simply would like to avoid using your little expressions by mistake. You might be left with only one son. Whereby, the way things are going, I won't need to worry about the temple for very much longer.'
Metjen's mother snapped her fingers, summoned a flatbread from its basket and started chewing pensively. 'Your father would be delighted. But what the heck is she up to?'
'Sorry, it's—I can't tell you the details, but Iseret was totally spooked. I've never seen her like this. Something went wrong, and she is now waiting for the hand of Fate to do...well, whatever Fate wishes to do.'
'I agree, that's wildly out of character,' his mother said.
Metjen picked up a chunk of melon and wandered through the lobby. 'I can already hear father's umpteenth rendition of his lecture on how stupid I was to join in the first place. It's bad enough I'm out of sync with the zeitgeist, joining a collective of magical freaks only to have things fall apart, is beyond annoying.'
His mother tutted. 'Metjen, you are rather rude sometimes. That was not a nice thing to say about the poor old Servants.'
He finished a glass of karkadi sweet enough to cause instant dental decay, with a touch of mint the way he liked it. 'Sorry, but it's true in a way. Without my sun-flow the temple would most likely have collapsed already. Nebmutef is too old to go Beyond and get the Divine Power and Iseret can't keep things afloat on her own. Nobody else has enough talent to even dream of the Blessing. Apart from... well... . ' He stopped himself in time before mentioning the twins.
Mother clapped her hands, and the tray hovered back into the kitchen. 'Go and get some rest dear, you're tired and that always makes you edgy.'
Metjen grabbed his bags, put his foot on the first step, opened his mouth, then shut it again. Mother was right, he was too weary to deal with the flood of private messages and e-mails from his various girlfriends. Juggling responses, let alone arranging meetings, would require more energy than he could muster at the moment.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, he thought as he climbed the staircase towards his flat on the top floor, Blondie following in his wake. He kicked the door shut and felt so shattered, he dropped his belongings on the floor once more and made it to his bed, where he fell asleep promptly.
It was dark outside when he woke up with a start. Something was licking his ear.
Blondie is hungry again. Metjen wondered what time it was, checked his watch, groaned and dashed into the bathroom.
He could not be late for dinner, it would upset his mother.
***
His father pushed an empty plate away. 'Would you kindly share what's going on? You're telling me Rani-Ra and Ranofer are not to join the servants—which indeed they shouldn't, and I wasn't aware they were ever planning to do so. And I don't want another of your little explosions, so we will not engage in that discussion again. I'm talking about the one where we disagree on why your esteemed maternal ancestors might have kept their distance from the Servants.'
Metjen carefully folded his napkin.
His father continued with today's lecture. 'From what I hear, Her Wisdom recently seems to be impersonating the Devourer on a permanent basis. If you carry on fixing things for her you'll soon look like something the cats would drag in were they allowed to go outside. It makes me wonder whether you lot have accidentally put a curse on yourselves?'
'Not accidentally, no. At least I don't think so,' Metjen said.
Four pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. Two more on the floor did likewise, but that was only because they liked the sound of his voice. He got up, went to the wall and pushed aside a Monet hiding a safe that would survive a nuclear explosion—or so the vendor had promised. Metjen did not trust him and had added a Jaws of Sobek spell. He entered the combinations, pulled a number of levers and wrenched it open.
'Cotton gloves!'
Metjen sniffed. As if he would ever forget. He reached into the safe for the gloves, put them on, took out two objects and returned to the table. 'I wanted to examine them earlier but there never was any time.'
'How often do you want to check them, they're the same good old artefacts, one of which is nice, the other one isn't. And that's about it,' Ranofer drawled as he chewed on a mint leaf.
'Thanks for your useful comments, dear brother. To satisfy your curiosity-- I saw something in the sanctuary that made me curious.'
His father opened his mouth, but Metjen put his hand up. 'Bear with me for a moment.' He found nothing amiss with the turquoise scarab on the gold ring. It still was a fine specimen worthy of a noblewoman—the ring was that small and had the female name 'Amasis' engraved inside in hieroglyphs.
No self-respecting ancient noble however would even look at the wig, after all these years their heirloom was a sorry sight with its brownish braids all knotted into a bristly tangle. The remains were still valuable. Gold beads glinted from the mess that squatted on Metjen's hand like a woolly jellyfish on bad hair day. Lotus flowers shaped from a crystal paste dangled from strings of gold wire that once were fixed to the crown. At the back, it all ended in a solid golden plaque that bore the hieroglyph for 'S'.
Unfortunately, there was nothing more as the whole hairpiece had been hacked apart in a way that bode ill for whoever had been wearing it at the time. Metjen banged on the table. 'Yes!' With a yodel, Blondie dashed away from underneath, stopped on the Kirman in the middle of the room and gave Metjen the type of accusing look cats seemed to have a patent on.
'Sorry, Blondie.'
The eyes directed at him got even more expressive and if he wanted to stave off an explosion he had to give.
'This has never revealed anything as Ranofer so shrewdly observed. And it still doesn't, not by itself.' He probably deserved the groans from around the table but not the frantic bib-licking from Mish-Mish. His mother inhaled air. A speech was hovering, but before it could land he waggled the wig at her.
'Let me finish, please. I got to observe an object I can't tell you about, but it has been with the servants since, uh—forever, just like our artefacts belong to the family ever since that mummified dog in your office was a pup.' He did not dare to mention Imhotep's name.
'I have checked out this, uh, object many times and I'm sure it's made of the same crystalline substance used for the decoration on our wig. They give me the impression as if they come from the same source or are at least related.'
His father was getting restless, so he spoke faster. 'What this holy artefact did has shocked all the servants—hence the bad atmosphere. And this isn't all. Like us, the servants also got a message when the object did what it shouldn't have done. And please don't ask me what that was.'
'Message?' his sister said. 'You mean this garbled bullshit passed down the generations like a historical game of Chinese whispers?' His mother raised an eyebrow, but Rani-Ra just smiled sweetly.
'Build a bridge across the generations and guard the light!' Ranofer said in sepulchral tones.
'Not that old nonsense again.' Father speared the last bit of baklava and dragged his booty to safety. 'You're all here, so you have built your bridge and the sun is also still shining, okay--not at this moment, so no need to guard anything.'
Metjen put the artefacts back in the safe. 'The servant's message was not at all like ours which must have once meant something else entirely—'
'You will be great in the land of Egypt forever, just keep this wig in one piece.' Ranofer interrupted again, which got him a menacing glare.
'If you don't shut up reasonably soon I'll put the latest spell on you. Can I continue?' Metjen glowered around the table. He did not try the same approach underneath as it would not work. 'The voice at the shrine felt like a gasping in the head. No use asking me for the exact words, but it was a warning. The voice was talking about things coming to the end.' He raised his head towards the ceiling, spotted cobwebs—and realised that he could indeed recall the message for whatever it was worth, at the temple this still was impossible.
'And Iseret takes this to mean the servants are at an end? Now there's a thought.' His father checked under the table, got hold of Mish-Mish and dragged him onto his lap.
'No, she checked the possibilities and thought it was best to let Fate run its course. She's worried about doing the wrong thing. But I believe it's not the temple she's concerned about.'
'I'm convinced you shouldn't get your loincloth in a twist about it either,' his father said, sniffing the bouquet of an excellent French vintage. His other hand was still caressing a somnolent cat.
'But I do care. The temple is one of the last places on Earth that still contains magic. I want it to continue, despite all our problems. And as I said, I'm sure our heirlooms are connected. I just need to find out how.'
His father rolled his eyes, then sat up, startling Mish-Mish, who leapt to the floor and stalked away.
'In case you happen to be still interested, we think there indeed is a western corridor to mirror the eastern one. It's hell to get the fill out, but we've hacked away enough to see that there seems to be a certain seal close to the doorway—'
'It's from Imhotep after all?' Metjen leaned forward.
'Looks like it, yes.' With a smug expression on his face, his father reached for the wine bottle.
Metjen felt excitement rising inside, flushing his cheeks. Imhotep on the seal of the obelisk and on the entrance to the corridor. That glassy paste used for the obelisk and on their wig. There had to be a missing link between all these clues and he would find it, Iseret be damned. If she thought he would sit on his hands, she would have to think twice.
'There are a few bits I need to sort out tomorrow, but if I make it in time, I'll guide that group from bloody Sakhmet Tours for you and then check out the corridor afterwards.'
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This chapter is dedicated to @SamMaze - and Lucy. Sam's novel 'Rise' features a very different kind of 'pet'.
HIEROGLYPHS:
I will spare you the full lecture; the professor can do it much better. Hieroglyphs were mainly used by priests in official documents - or on temple walls. The ancient Egyptians also used a cursive version for daily business; it allowed them to write faster. There are four types of hieroglpyhs: Full words, syllabic signs (two or three consonants together), alphabetic signs for a single word - and a determinative that was supposed to help the reader. This was necessary given that the old scribes took it too easy on the vowels. Which in turn makes it difficult to determine how things were pronounced. A modern archaeologist could converse with an ancient Egyptian via letters. Talking would be a different matter entirely. There are some hints; Coptic is often used as a reference.