The cobra queen, p.21
The Cobra Queen, page 21
Oh boy. Morticia had dabbled in something. Something deadly serious, and during the Agitation there was no telling what could happen. Hadn’t I been told that the Agitation changed things? Even the simplest wishes and rituals or games could spawn real paranormal activity?
‘Tell me. Tell me now,’ I pressed.
My friend turned a whiter shade of pale before turning a deep, embarrassed crimson. Even with all those colour changes, the black marks around her eyes did not budge. ‘I’ve been, you know, reading books on witchcraft,’ she explained guiltily. ‘It’s no big deal. Lots of people do it. So I lit some candles and tried some stuff. Who cares? It didn’t do anything,’ she said. Though her words were casual and she was quite right – lots of people tried a spell or two when the whim took them and it very rarely did anything, unless it was the likes of my Great-Aunt Celia doing the spell-casting – I could tell that Morticia was unconvinced. She was very afraid that something had happened. And, well, in that moment I could not blame her.
‘The thing you tried … Did it involve any Egyptian gods? Horus? Or Thoth, by chance?’
She covered her mouth suddenly, recognising the name. Morticia nodded.
‘Thoth. With the head of an ibis?’
Again a nod. ‘There was a … an invocation written in the book.’
As a god of magick, Thoth was a common subject for occult rituals. And that’s what she’d done. She’d read an invocation to the Egyptian god of magick just as we were set to come to an exhibition filled with Egyptian antiquities. The ancient Egyptian god of magick, knowledge and wisdom – one of the most important deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. He was the scribe to the gods and in some tellings, the actual keeper of the universe. He was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis, holding a staff of power in one hand and an ankh – the key of the Nile, the symbol of life – in the other. In later history he was strongly associated with judgement of the dead.
Oh boy.
‘But I prayed to all kinds of gods and goddesses and nothing happened!’
‘Well, I think this one may have heard you. Thoth was said to have restored Horus’s eye.’
‘Holy … holy hell!’ she shrieked and covered her face with both hands.
‘No such thing,’ I said of hell. Then thought, I hope. I would have believed just about anything at that moment. ‘Look, Morticia … I think you have been chosen for some reason, to wear this Wadjet Eye or Eye of Horus.’ It seemed a near-impossible coincidence that she could have been dabbling in the occult, calling Thoth just as the Agitation was happening, without knowing. I had not told her about the Agitation and the Revolution of the Dead. She would have thought I was crazy, I’d believed, but now, of course, I’d have to tell her everything if we got through this alive. But could it be a coincidence? No. Had something or someone led her, suggested it to her in her dreams, influenced her in some way so she would invoke an Egyptian god of magick, and so I would invite her to this event, everything conspiring to bring us to this moment?
‘Chosen for what?’ she said, her voice high-pitched.
‘That, I do not know,’ I said, and I was scared for her – both of us, really, though I had at least a slightly better idea of what I was chosen for. ‘Can you remember what you were doing? What you might have said, specifically?’ I looked to the exits, both of which seemed miles away across the strewn and resting bodies of the hundreds of guests. Maybe I could get her out of here before …
Breaking glass diverted my attention and I looked back as four shabti figures, two of them made of blue faience and two of brown-black basalt, broke from their display cases in the exhibition and began to swell dramatically in size, outgrowing their carved bodies and mummification wrappings and shedding the faience and basalt like snake skins. In seconds they were ten feet tall and standing strong in the big gallery.
Holy hell on wheels. Or not hell exactly. Wrong mythology.
The shabtis! Of course. This must have been some kind of premonition. Remembering my own, I fidgeted with my bag. Morticia was past the point of motion, standing in terrified silence and gaping at the huge figures.
There was a deep rumble that shook the sandstone foundations of the Temple of Dendur, and several patrons moaned or fidgeted in their supernaturally induced sedation, perhaps distantly aware of the terror to come. It seemed the forces that be, whatever forces were at work, were ready for their moment. Morticia was as white as I’d ever seen her, and now she stood behind me and held on to my arm.
Here we go.
I pulled out my five shabtis and instructed her to remove the two from her bag. Morticia still could not move, petrified as she was, and I took her bag from her and placed the seven shabtis at our feet and willed them to grow large. ‘Obey me,’ I whispered. ‘Please …’ They did not. Come on … come on … do something … ‘Shabtis, I call on you,’ I whispered urgently. Still nothing.
Now there was movement, something rising up and taking shape from within the sarcophagus I dared not peer into. A creature was materialising. Or several. No, it was one creature, unmistakably an Egyptian goddess of the old world, and she rose and took form until she filled the space above me, perhaps thirty feet high, taller even than the great gate of the Temple of Dendur behind her, bent and peering angrily down at me.
Gulp.
The goddess was swathed in the traditional kilt and headdress of a pharaoh, a striped Nemes headdress falling just above her bare human-like breasts. But this creature, though unmistakably female, was not human. Above her neck was not a woman’s head, but that of a lion with its terrible lips parted to display pointed feline teeth. And above the striped headdress were two fiercely hissing cobras, their hoods flared. They spat and hissed, as wrathful as the mysterious supernatural serpents who had put the other guests into their unnatural slumber.
Yes, Wadjet. I knew her from my mother’s books. This was one of the physical forms of Wadjet, protector of the pharaohs. And she was not happy.
I gaped, unable to take my eyes off the twin snakes that sat like second and third heads above her headdress, emitting a terrible sibilant noise at a frequency that seemed to shake the brain in my skull. I was shocked and yet I had expected this, had known somehow that something would happen at this launch, though I’d known not what. Whatever the reason, this lion-headed woman had risen from Hatshepsut’s sarcophagus and she wanted my attention. Her two large feline eyes and four smaller serpent ones focused directly on me with a kind of steady, barely contained rage. Finally the bone-rattling hiss subsided, and I heard a booming voice. Though this powerful and menacing being – Or is she a collection of beings? I thought – was not visibly speaking, and had no human mouth, I could hear her clearly. She spoke with long pauses between each word:
I am Wadjet, the Cobra Queen.
I am the Queen of Vengeance, the Protector of Kings, sworn to protect my Pharaoh for all time.
The great pharaoh has been defiled. Now she will rise.
Prepare for your destruction.
I swallowed and backed up, nearly causing Morticia to trip over behind me. Destruction? Because of the pharaoh Hatshepsut? But her tomb was defiled centuries before!
‘Wait,’ I said, holding up my hands, and my gaze passed over the shabtis at my feet, sitting as uselessly as little toy soldiers. ‘Great Goddess Wadjet, Cobra Queen, respectfully, you’ve made a mistake. We are not responsible for this. We did not defile the mighty pharaoh,’ I said in a loud but placating tone, with my hands still in the air, as if a great cannon were trained on me. The cobras on her head shifted back and forth in the air, ready to strike out. Morticia had moved to crouch down behind my back, unsuccessfully hiding. The marks on her face had not budged. This was not good. None of this was good.
‘What mistake?’ Morticia said quietly into the backs of my legs. She could not hear the creature’s booming voice, I realised, but I was quite sure she could see it, or at the very least feel the malevolent magick at work, as she was shaking like a leaf.
I held up my hands further in surrender and didn’t so much as twitch for fear of prompting a swift and violent attack. I spoke very softly. ‘This is Wadjet, the protector of the pharaohs,’ I explained in a low voice to my terrified friend behind me. ‘She thinks it was us who defiled the resting place of Hatshepsut. I think.’
‘Us? But we just came to a launch at the museum!’ Morticia shrieked, and the cobras atop Wadjet’s head darted forward, spitting something green and acrid into the air between us. I dodged to one side and Morticia shrieked and fell to the ground, covering her head. The green spit of the Cobra Queen narrowly missed us, and I noticed with a shiver that it bubbled and hissed on the floor next to us, as if eating away at the stone.
Launches seemed like increasingly dangerous propositions, I decided. The first one I had ever attended ended in a confrontation with a 400-year-old dead noblewoman with a penchant for virgin blood, and this time it was an acid-spitting lion-headed goddess with cobras for hair. This new big-city lifestyle wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
‘Great goddess, great Protector Wadjet, respectfully, it wasn’t us,’ I told Hatshepsut’s ancient protector. ‘We are here only as guests of the exhibition. We are not the ones responsible for the exhibition, or the removal of her body from her tomb. I swear this to you.’
The lion-headed creature moved forward, narrowing her huge cat eyes. I swallowed heavily.
‘The Great Pharaoh Hatshepsut has been defiled,’ she announced with a pause between each word. ‘There must be a sacrifice. You are the representative of your people.’ She pointed at me accusingly with one long, human-like finger. Hatshepsut’s four great shabtis came to stand on either side of the sarcophagus and the giant, looming figure of Wadjet.
‘I am? The representative of which people?’ This was a thing to do with being The Seventh, no doubt about it. It was always down to me, wasn’t it? These countesses and queens and goddesses always wanted answers from me, but I didn’t have any! It hardly seemed fair that I’d have to answer for grave robbers and the actions of archaeologists who explored the Valley of the Kings more than a century before I was even born.
‘Hatshepsut’s grave was desecrated in antiquity,’ I said as calmly as I could in the face of the titanic creature. ‘I was not responsible. In fact no one here was responsible.’ Directly, I thought. ‘I was not even born then, I can assure you. We have …’ I began, thinking. ‘We have gathered your great pharaoh’s funerary belongings together in one place,’ I said, stretching my arms out to gesture to the gallery, ‘so … um, so your great and wise pharaoh may be whole again and rest in eternity.’
I wasn’t sure what made me say it, but for once so many of Hatshepsut’s belongings were in one place and I thought it might appease this great creature whose job was to protect her beloved pharaoh. The cobras continued to watch me, writhing and hissing, and Wadjet’s lion eyes drilled into me as she thought this over. Hatshepsut’s mummy had been moved out of her tomb and damaged, along with most of the statues and reliefs of her. It was all thought by most academics to be part of a campaign of Tutmosis III to discredit the female pharaoh after her death. So why didn’t this Cobra Queen go after him? Or Howard Carter? Or any of the other number of archaeologists who had been to her tomb and taken things? Surely a mighty being like this would have got the memo? But now it was all here in New York and it was the Agitation and here we were. How about that for luck?
I looked down and frowned. Blasted shabtis!
‘The great pharaoh was stolen, and lain in the tomb of her wet nurse.’ At least that’s what I’d read. ‘She was hidden away, but not by us. She is now recognised as the great pharaoh she is, and –’
The hissing and spitting serpents grew still, eyes on me, and in that great voice Wadjet spoke. ‘The pharaoh must have her sacrifice, and she has chosen.’
‘Whoa. Look. With respect, Cobra Queen or Wadjet, or whatever you would best like me to call you, I feel like you haven’t listened to a word I said –’
‘Most wise one, Thoth, has brought her sacrifice here. We shall begin,’ the Cobra Queen said, dismissing my words, and to my horror Morticia began to shift along the ground towards the sarcophagus. But her feet weren’t moving; she was being pulled along by some force, and now the giant shabtis were reaching for her and lifting her up above their heads. Poor Morticia was positively stricken with terror, struggling but unable even to scream, her strength no match for the ten-foot-tall, supernaturally animated figures of ancient workers.
No, Thoth did not bring her here! That was me. And Vlad. Hell. I really should have left her heartbroken outside the subway. Anything but this.
‘No, no, no …!’ I shouted. ‘Put her down! Put her down now!’ I demanded, but the pharaoh’s shabtis did not listen to me. Neither did mine.
‘No!’ I screamed, and the air grew cold and misty around me, and in seconds the form of Lieutenant Luke materialised, stepping forward and standing between the giant creature and me in his fully human form, uniform impeccable, his cavalry sword raised.
‘Luke!’ I gasped, relieved to see him.
The great creature before me turned to notice him, and her eyes fixed on his face. ‘I see you have a servant willing to sacrifice himself.’
I looked to Luke and back to the giant swaying goddess. ‘No one is sacrificing anybody!’ I shouted.
I couldn’t lose Luke. Not now that we finally had each other. I stepped forward and placed a hand on his uniformed shoulder. ‘Don’t leave me,’ I said. We could battle this thing together, I reasoned.
Luke raised his sword. ‘I will not let you harm her!’
‘Very well,’ the goddess said and behind us glass broke again. Canopic jars flew past.
‘What’s happening?’ Morticia cried as she was shifted in the air, and with relief I saw that she was being gently lowered to the ground by the shabtis. She was being released!
‘Thank you,’ I said, relieved, but when Luke turned I saw confusion etched across his handsome features, and worse, I saw that his eyes were changing. They were not turning green again, nor black, this was something else, something worse. Ink ran from the inside corners of his bright blue eyes, the symbols forming as if drawn by invisible hands. He was marked, as Morticia had been.
In moments he fell, thudding to the floor as so many of the guests had done, his Union cap rolling to my feet, and cavalry sword clattering to the floor
‘Good goddess,’ I said aloud as Luke, his face now marked with the Eye of Horus, was pulled forward across the ground, out of my reach, and then picked up by the giant shabtis (not mine, which remained frustratingly inert), his beautiful human form heartbreakingly limp and vulnerable. An ancient brain hook went flying across the gallery to the centre of the Temple of Dendur, where I could see he was being taken. Now I understood.
This was the place my lover would be sacrificed for the resurrection of Hatshepsut. The Cobra Queen was going to resurrect Hatshepsut so she could avenge those who defiled her tomb, but something was missing.
‘They want a brain. A brain for their pharaoh …’ I whispered in horror.
‘They what?’ Morticia said. I saw that the lines on her face had disappeared. She had been released and was safe now, or as safe as she could be in this chaotic wing of the Met before a colossal serpent goddess, an angry mummified pharaoh and her giant shabti workers. Luke had presented himself at just the right – or wrong – moment. It was to be him, now. The sacrifice was to be him. I just couldn’t let that happen.
‘Great Pharaoh Hatshepsut,’ I called, summoning the spirit of the ancient king. ‘I call on you now!’ I had my mother’s interpreter jewel, the Babel Pendant, around my neck. Thank goddess I brought it. I did not speak the pharaoh’s language.
The serpent goddess, who had been overseeing the preparations for the sacrifice of my lover, turned and hissed at me with her double cobra heads, blocking my path to the temple. ‘How dare you call on my mistress!’ she bellowed, and I outstretched my arms and closed my eyes, filled with fury. There would be no swaying this protector. I had to go to the source.
‘I am The Seventh. She will hear me!’ I declared with authority. The Cobra Queen had to let me pass, and I had to convince Hatshepsut this sacrifice could not go ahead, that the shabtis should cease their mission. This was madness. ‘Your mistress will hear me now!’
There was a moment of silence, and then the sarcophagus began to emit a keening sound I had never heard before, and I felt my throat seize up. Stay strong, Pandora. Stay strong. You have the power. You are The Seventh.
‘I am The Seventh!’ I declared again, this time stronger and with yet more fury, thinking of Luke’s human form and his vulnerable state, and I lifted from the floor of the gallery, actually lifted into the air. Beneath me, my seven shabti figures burst to life, growing in size until they were ten feet tall and standing at my sides, as I was suspended in the air. ‘I am The Seventh! Hear me now!’
My shabti figures lumbered towards the centre of the temple, where Luke lay helpless, set on their task of stopping the ritual. There was a tussle between the pharaoh’s shabtis and mine, who, at seven, thankfully outnumbered them, and I winced as part of the Temple of Dendur was broken, puffs of dust rising into the air, as reanimated shabti smashed against its ancient walls. I hoped it was not too late to stop the gruesome ritual happening within.
‘Your Pharaoh Hatshepsut will hear me! Now!’ I demanded, and finally the Cobra Queen relented. As if dismissed by her unseen mistress she began to dematerialise, shrinking down again until she was back inside the sarcophagus from whence she came, and out of the sarcophagus something else rose …
Someone else …
Soon a ghastly figure was revealed, standing upright from within the heavy sarcophagus. There was no doubt as to her identity. Hatshepsut’s mummified body had been greatly damaged by time and by those who would defile her, ribs showing through where her brown, leathery skin did not cover her. Her nose was stuffed with cloths, one ear had sunk into her head. Her eyes were leathery and without eyeballs, the sockets stuffed with wrapped cloths, as big as bugs’ eyes. The pharaoh’s wrath was great, and perhaps justified, but I would not let her sacrifice my spirit guide, my Luke.
