The Black Doves Of Amen

Chapter One

Raib sat on a stone wall, outside the tomb of a long gone noble man, waiting for Iunu, his closest friend and hunting partner. Iunu had entered the tomb to negotiate with the jackal folk some hours earlier and had not yet returned.

From the stone wall at the top of the hill, he could see the deserted village below. Raib reminisced. In that village there had lived a baker who baked the most delicious bread. He remembered how every morning, an hour before dawn, once the bread was baking in the oven and some milk had been poured for the cats, the baker would return upstairs from the shop to his sleeping wife and wake her. Then it would be his turn to sleep and his wife would take the loaves from the oven and brush honey onto their crusts.

Throughout winter, the village’s old men, eager for every drop of life still their own for the taking, would congregate at the bakery for the warmth of the oven and the pure pleasure of gossip. They had all seen better days and loved to reminisce about the years of the last real King, before the Impostor had stolen the Throne. Boyhood tales of hippopotamus hunts, legends of epic wars and ribald banter about seductive Priestesses helped coax the dough into bread. However, while the bread cooled after being taken out of the oven, the mistress of the house insisted on hearing real news of the present: disagreements over boating accidents on the River or the latest sightings of the old King’s hawk in the sky. But these old men only really wished to live in the past. So they would bid their farewells, one by one, to go and look for life dripping from other places and in other ways.

Yet the baker had not baked his bread, nor had his wife fed the thirsty for some years; for the village had been abandoned after a terrible and violent raid. A similar fate as had befallen upon Raib’s own village some years ago. It had been the Impostor’s men who’d carried out the raid. Raib knew for a fact that the baker and his wife had been chopped to pieces, to be fed to the army’s lions. Keb, Raib’s Master, had sent him to gather their remains for a proper burial. He’d returned to Master Keb’s workshop to report that their remains had not been spared, but for the little blood the foxes had not been able to lick off the walls. Master Keb had asked Raib to prepare instructions to the souls of the baker and his wife for their journey to the afterlife nonetheless:

Instruct the baker’s soul to tell the great Ra his many good stories, advised Master Keb.

Which stories in particular? Raib had asked, for he felt sure it would help the baker if his instructions were more precise.

The ones that only the luckiest lived to tell, came the reply.

Raib stood up, yawned and shivered, then sat back down on the stone wall. He couldn’t wait for Iunu much longer.

‘I’ll give him until the next monkey to come out from there,’ he said out loud so that it would form a pact. Who would it be best to make a pact with? Raib wondered. He’d have to be doubly careful to keep the pact if he made it with the Night, and with all the stars that hung from beneath her greatness, including the twelve that the city’s folk called the Monkeys — which folk used to tell the time by at night. If he broke a pact with the Night, then she could make the day come much sooner, and Raib’s Uncle Isafit would learn of his enterprising. On the other hand, if he made a pact with the sand and rocks on the treacherous path, or the stinging, biting creatures that hid beneath them, or the owls that waited for them to show, then he might be given a little leniency. Then again, he thought carefully, it might be a little better than having no pact at all. Raib looked around him. The Night, the sand and the rocks were too powerful.

And what if he doesn’t? ’ said a woman’s voice from the darkness.

Raib stood and spun around. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, bothered by the realization that he was not alone; that he had been snuck up on.

‘Surprised you, did I?’

‘Perhaps,’ Raib answered, reluctant to admit his surprise until he knew who’d followed him so quietly. He looked around, she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Oh come now, when was the last time anyone crept up on you?’

Never, Raib thought, as he realized that he might be dealing with a Spirit. He would have to be careful. Pleasantries would certainly be required.

‘I like your voice,’ Raib stated. ‘It’s easy to read, even in the darkness. It’s as though I —’ Raib faltered.

‘As though you have always known me?’

‘A desert fox,’ said Raib.

‘I am not!’ the Spirit objected.

‘A desert fox outsmarted me once, but other than that, no one.’

‘Outsmarted you? Nobody else? Well, that is what you think. Although, I’ve been watching you for a very long time and I remember that particular fox very well indeed!’

‘Are you an owl Spirit then?’

‘I watch you during the day too, but nice try.’

‘Well, I give up then,’ said Raib.

Are you at least going to answer my first question, or are we both playing at guessing games tonight?’

Surprise that he’d encountered a Spirit, Raib had to think for a moment before he recalled her first question. He didn’t have an answer. What was he going to do if Iunu didn’t come out of the tomb? And why did she care?

‘I guess I’ll just have to go in there and find out what’s taking him so long.’

‘You don’t really want to do that … go in there, I mean?’

‘No. No, I don’t really want to go in there’ Raib agreed. ‘I guess you’ve been watching me sitting out here for a while then?’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’ll go in there if I have to.’

‘Ha!’ the Spirit scoffed.

‘Don’t you laugh at me, whatever you are!’ He demanded angrily. ‘I’ve outrun baboons and hopped crocodiles. I even built my own armoury of fine bronze spears and swords.’

‘And you’ve hidden them around your village,’ countered the voice.

‘How did you know that?’ Raib asked, still turning in circles, looking for the voice that always seemed closer to his right ear than his left, no matter how far right he turned.

‘Sometimes you pretend that the Impostor’s men have invaded your village and that it’s down to you to creep around and pick them off, one by one.’

‘You must be a noble and powerful Spirit to be able to see me train within my village walls!’ Raib propitiated, growing more and more anxious with every breath.

‘I serve a noble and powerful Spirit, and I take many forms.’

‘Serve? Then why don’t you show yourself?’

‘I’m not sure that I should.’

‘Why not? Has your Master not given you clothes to wear? Or are you too modest?’ Raib dared.

‘You’ll be the one feeling modest if you do see me.’

‘Slugs’ dicks to this! I’m going to find my friend,’ Raib said.

‘Don’t you want my help then?’

‘I don’t think a naked servant girl is going to be much help in there,’ Raib said, turning to contemplate the dark entrance of the tomb.

‘Is it not customary for a young man to show a respectful amount of fear when confronted by a Spirit messenger?’

‘Why should I? You’re a sneak and you won’t show yourself.’

‘I have observed your fearlessness. I hope you will be more respectful when you meet my Master.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘It is merely my way of telling you that I find you difficult to get along with.’

‘I hear that a lot,’ Raib replied.

‘I know you do.’

‘So you know everything about me then?’

‘You referred to that time the fox followed you,’ she reminded him.

Raib said nothing. He was only eight when the fox had followed him. It was on the morning he’d gone hunting in the hills just outside the town he’d grown up in. He’d caught a gazelle, but when he returned to the town later in the afternoon, he was just in time to see the last of the Impostor’s soldiers leave in their blood soaked uniforms. His village had been in the same state the soldiers had left other villages, just like the baker’s village.

‘Were you there that day?’ Raib asked feeling numb and subdued.

‘Well no, but I spoke to that fox once.’

‘They killed my mother and all of my old friends that day,’ Raib cautioned her. ‘What part did the fox play exactly?’

‘He wanted to make sure you were away long enough to miss it.’

‘Well, I suppose he meant well by me then,’ said Raib who had long ago accepted that there was nothing he could have done if he had been there. He would have been slaughtered with everyone else. ‘But what was it to you, going and talking to that fox about it?’

‘It was eight years ago, Raib, does it matter what it was to me?’

Annoyed by her continued evasiveness, Raib shook his head and stepped into the nobleman’s tomb —

‘Wait!’

‘Only if you show yourself!’ Raib insisted.

‘I thought you’d be surprised to know that Spirits were there that day!’

‘Spirits are everywhere everyday. It’s only useful to know which ones are there and why.’

‘Do you ever wonder what they want from you?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

Unless the moonlight was betraying Raib’s senses, a servant girl suddenly materialised before him, standing on long slender legs. Unlike ordinary servant girls she was dressed absurdly well. She wore a lion’s mane slung around her small shoulders, a skirt of large feathers and a chain of beads around her bare midriff.

‘Everyone maybe, but you’re not like everyone else, Raib.’

‘I hear that a lot too,’ he replied.

‘The Great Goddess decides what I tell you, Raib.’

‘The Great Goddess is your mistress?’

She nodded.

‘That makes you a Priestess,’ Raib exclaimed.

‘I cannot go back to her empty handed,’ the Priestess explained.

‘What task have you been given?’

‘She has heard that you and your friend are planning a hippopotamus hunt.’

‘What of it?’

‘Do you seriously mean to go ahead with it, Raib?’

‘That’s what she wants to know?’

‘Well, do you?’

Raib nodded.

‘Good,’ the young Priestess said, though more to herself than to Raib, ‘then I can tell my mistress that she can count on it,’ she said, relief evident in her voice.

Before Raib could voice his protest at the pressure this placed on him, she was gone. Alone again, Raib became aware that his chest was tight and his heart was beating hard. He was sixteen years of age and the Spirits had made their presence known to him twice already. The first had been some years before. It had been Sobek of the crocodiles that time.

Raib bit his lip anxiously and looked up from the mouth of the tomb towards the moon and the stars. A lone vulture flew across the moon’s waxing face. It would be full moon in three nights and now the hippopotamus hunt was no longer optional.

Raib entered the tomb and made his way down the stairs into the darkness. He passed paintings of the journey the soul of the dead took through the Twelve Gates with Seth’s protection, before being accepted into the next world by the Great Goddess. He carefully stepped over the warm bodies of the jackals sleeping in the chapel as he made his way towards the lamp-light that shone through the crack of the door to the tomb chamber where Iunu had gone to negotiate. A jackal growled in her sleep.

‘Leave me alone. I’ve just been tricked by a Priestess,’ he whispered. He heard a tail wag excitedly against the floor. It reminded him that news of a Priestess being seen would be well received by most. The very existence of the Priesthood was no longer a matter of fact, only faith, or, as some despaired, utter foolishness.

Raib entered the chamber. Iunu had been gagged and tied up in a corner of the tomb. Raib turned around to look at the other people in the tomb and saw that there were three in total — scruffy and malnourished as they were. Two sat on sacks. The third leant confidently up against the wall, sporting an elaborate wig and two tattooed Black Doves on his face, one over each cheek bone.

‘Who among you speaks for the jackals? I can’t honestly tell,’ asked Raib.

‘Nowadays, who we speak for depends on many things. But as I was telling your chum, we’re not working for any jackal Spirit, or any one like that,’ the tattooed man replied.

‘If you don’t speak for the jackals, then I’ll be taking my friend and be on my way,’ Raib told him.

‘Careful now, son,’ the tattooed man warned. ‘I grant that a young one like you could give me a fair run, but I have come all the way up this River from the Great Green Sea to seek my destiny. There’ll be no stopping me now.’

‘You’re a Sea Person from down the River, from the far north?’

‘I’m a thief, boy. I’m a thief looking for one last heist, one last dare.’

‘You’ll find it in this city,’ Raib told him confidently. ‘The Queen is due to return from a trade journey any day now. She’ll be coming right through this city to get to the River.’

‘I learned my craft picking bigger treasures from the midst of larger, better trained armies than hers, my boy. The sodded Queen can keep her spoils. I could fleece her thumbless. This town has other things, boy, more challenging things.’

‘Such as?’ Raib asked.

‘The witch-girl, boy. She who masters the demons. The jackals adore her, so I offered to tell them her story for these here lodgings. Strange thing it was, that I should find that young man,’ said the thief, pointing to Iunu. ‘Just as I finished telling my story about her, I found the one survivor, of all of her many victims, hiding behind the door!’

‘Oh,’ Raib said, as he realised who the thief was referring to by witch-girl. ‘I know of whom you speak. It is best not to tell stories about her.’

‘It took you a while to figure it out, boy. Are there a great many witch-girls in your life? Your chum here told me you were something special. Told me you were waiting outside, you see, and that if any harm came to him, well then, I’d have you to contend with. I told him I wasn’t looking for a fight, but then he went and told me who you were anyway — that you live in the village with the witch-girl and old Isafit’

‘What of it?’

‘Is it true that scorpions can’t bite you? And that you’ve outrun baboons … is that so?’ asked the thief as he turned to look at his mates over his shoulders. They’d been quietly listening whilst keeping their eyes on Raib.

‘These things, they can get talked up,’ Raib told him.

‘Yes, they can,’ the thief agreed. ‘Stories can have their own ways of being, their own Spirits so to speak.’

‘It is so,’ Raib agreed.

‘Like this story about the witch-girl. This witch-girl who sets demons on lustful men, like she did your friend here.’

‘It really is better not to speak of her,’ Raib cautioned him again.

‘We’re here because destiny sent us, boy. The witch-girl is wanted. There are other places she has to be. That means something to us.’

‘Her name is Tiani. What are you planning to do to her?’ Raib asked, feeling his heart double-cross him, his voice betraying his anxiety at the prospect of Tiani being in harm’s way.

The thief chuckled. ‘So we have the victim and the admirer,’ he said as he glanced at his two mates again, who gave short sniggers. ‘It’s a frightening thing that scar on his chest,’ observed the thief, referring to Iunu. ‘He told us how he got it after we’d tied him up,’ he continued. ‘He said that he was day-dreaming about the witch-girl while he was standing on the plough in the field one day and then, all of sudden, the tail of the bull pulling the plough turned into a Cobra and bit him on the chest.’ Raib stared defiantly at the thief who, having described Iunu’s life threatening ordeal quite precisely, stared back at Raib, watching closely, for the least perceptible of reactions, the barest of twitches.

‘My people thrive on stories, young one. Stories are the wind in our sails. Did you know that?’

‘Why did you gag him?’ Raib asked.

‘He overheard things he shouldn’t have.’

‘Such as?’ Raib demanded.

‘The story I told the Jackal’s about your witch-girl. He was listening in when he shouldn’t have been.’

‘Perhaps it was meant to be,’ Raib offered.

The thief frowned as he considered it.

‘That all depends.’

‘On what?’ Raib probed.

‘On whether things have been going the way they are meant to go.’

‘All I know is that we were supposed to come down here to negotiate with the jackals — for the rights to keep the hippopotamus we plan to hunt in three nights’ time.’

‘Plans are nothing, boy. If you are entering into business for your friend’s release, then give me something more tangible.’

‘I have promised that a hippopotamus will fall, to none other than a Priestess. She came to me in the wind, appearing from nowhere before my very own eyes. A beautiful Spirit girl, nearly as much as the witch-girl of whom you speak,’ Raib explained.

‘I see, I see,’ the thief nodded. ‘That is some remarkable leverage you have yourself there, boy. I wouldn’t want to be getting in the way of any promise to any Spirit.’

‘And another thing,’ Raib added, ‘as the jackals adore her, and if I were to offer her my protection —’

‘She ain’t in any harm,’ the thief cut in. ‘Let the boy go,’ he ordered his mates. Once Iunu was untied, the thief chuckled triumphantly. ‘We’ve walked into it this time, lads. There’ll be plenty for all. A right old scrap, the likes of which we’ve not seen in our lifetimes by my reckoning.’ Raib stared at him blankly.

‘Of course neither of these two young ones here could possibly realize that yet,’ one of the thief’s mates added as they stood Iunu up and brushed off his tunic.

‘You thieved a story off me tonight, boy,’ the thief told Iunu. ‘Listening in you were, I know it. Jackal cub had his nose up to the door from the very beginning.’

Iunu bit his lip and his nostrils flared.

‘You tell it to your friend here and nobody else, and I’ll consider us even,’ the thief ordered him.

Iunu nodded his head grudgingly.

‘Good then, we’ll be seeing you.’

‘Fish’s piss!’ Iunu swore once they were outside the tomb. ‘I thought I was done for in there!’

‘They didn’t look that bad to me. We could have taken the three of them,’ Raib countered.

‘I could have taken the three of them and another couple,’ Iunu replied. ‘It was the story that shook me. Left my soul hiding behind my own shadow!’

‘You don’t have to tell it to me if you don’t want to.’

‘I’m afraid I must, but I don’t know that I could, at least not out here. Anybody could be listening,’ Iunu said looking around. Raib saw his eyes linger on an owl.

‘Wait ’til we’re back in the village,’ Raib told him.

‘And there you can explain all about the Priestess you mentioned to that thief,’ Iunu whispered.

‘We’d better run,’ Raib told him as he looked up at the stars. ‘We’re going to have to if we’re to have any chance of getting back before first light anyway.’ The eighth monkey was well up over the horizon, the ninth would soon follow.

‘Race you!’ Iunu challenged.

The village where Raib lived was perched on the side of a very large mound of scrap stone, broken statues, mud bricks and other building refuse that had accumulated over centuries of various majestic building projects, and had built up against an old disused Temple. There was a small lake that filled when the River flooded. It would soon return to marsh once the flood waters had resided a little more. The many crags and gaps between the large pieces of stone had been filled in with mud and straw over time to keep out the snakes and scorpions. Anything that was small enough to be lifted and carried had been used to build a ramshackle village on top of the mound. The neatest of the rocks and stones had gone into building another level on top of the Temple. That was where Isafit lived.

As they sprinted down the track that lead towards the Temple of the bearded Queen, Raib could see the light from the lamps, that were lit each night, along the top of the village’s walls. There were many homes packed very tightly within those walls, separated only by small courtyards, alleys and stairways or just dividing walls. It was a place to call home, and the soldiers left them alone there.

Iunu just beat Raib to the gate. Once inside the village, they tiptoed quietly, all the time watching around.

Raib’s quarter was beneath the floor of the brewer’s house, accessible by a gap between two sandstone blocks that had evidently been discarded due to several curses carved deep onto their surfaces. It had become Raib’s home because he was not vulnerable to the curses, nor afraid of them.

‘I was visited by the Priestess of the Great Goddess while I was waiting for you. She wanted my assurance that the hippopotamus hunt would happen. She told me that the Great Goddess sought this reassurance herself.’

‘The hippopotamus is a creature of Seth!’ Iunu stated.

‘So?’ Raib retorted. For it was common knowledge, and in most regards, common sense that the hippopotamus was a creature devoted to Seth, just as the baboon was a creature of Thoth and the lions and vultures were the creatures of the Great Goddess. Besides, Iunu had never raised this particular issue about the hunt before.

‘It is a dark night when Seth is alluded to twice,’ Iunu said solemnly.

‘I don’t understand! When was the first time?’ Raib asked as he finished knotting the hammock.

‘Seth’s Priest was mentioned in the story about Tiani,’ Iunu explained. He cleared his throat and sat on the hammock, leaning in close to Raib so that he