Chapter eight
I was being carried aloft by an immense bird. I could hear the noise of the powerful wings flapping at an incredible speed as I passed in and out of consciousness.
I knew death was near, the great bird must be flying me to the underworld.
Shouldn’t the underworld be down? I thought as consciousness left me for what I assumed was the final time.
I awoke in a darkened room, I felt as if I had drunk too much wine for I was unable to concentrate and make sense of my surroundings. My pain was gone, a flood of relief flowed through me as I fell into a deep sleep.
I felt Ra shining on my cheek as I emerged out of my slumber. I opened my eyes and cautiously looked around just moving my eyes. I could feel a slight pain in my abdomen but it was tolerable.
I was lying on a bed in a strange room painted blindingly white, Ra was shining through a large window. There were shiny objects all around me that looked like a white highly polished bronze.
I notice shiny clear ropes strung around me, they appeared to be hollow with a liquid slowly travelling through them. The ropes originated from a clear sack made of the same material full of the liquid.
I followed the rope down to its other end, I felt panic rise in me as I saw it was attached to a shiny white bronze needle stuck in my arm.
I thought about pulling the needle out, but decided against it. The gods must have put it in for a reason perhaps to prepare my heart for its final weighing.
I fell back to sleep.
I heard voices, I kept my eyes closed hoping to hear Anubis and Sobek discussing my fate.
Instead I heard three distinct voices talking in a harsh unfamiliar language. I opened my eyes. I saw three people looking at me from the edge of my bed. One, a man looked to be from the Black land, the other two a man and woman must have come from the primitive tribes far to the north for they were white skinned.
They wore strange garb that looked to be made of the finest cloth I had ever seen.
“Kem are you well?” The white male asked me in an almost incomprehensible accent.
“Am I dead? Is this the underworld?” I replied in a voice so hoarse I did not recognize it as my own.
“No, you are alive,” his accent had improved.
“Where…” my voice failed me.
“You are still in the Black land, but a very long time has passed. You must rest.”
There was a small table in front of me ingeniously supported with a white bronze bracket device, it had a cup of some kind of juice and a bowl of a clear green colored substance.
The other man picked up an oddly shaped spoon and scooped up a portion of the green substance and held it in front of my mouth.
I noticed I was hungry so I tentatively tasted the substance. It was very sweet and had an odd taste and texture. I didn’t have to chew it.
I took the spoon from the man and quietly ate the rest of the bowl washing it down with the orange colored juice in the cup.
“How long has it been?” I asked the three of them.
“Six um… six…” the white male took a beautiful red stylus from his pocket and a small stack of the finest papyrus I had ever seen and wrote something on it. He showed it to me.
It said six thousand years. I almost fainted, how had this happened?
I noticed my bracelet was not on my wrist and felt a surge of panic.
“My bracelet, where is it? It is very dangerous,” I said urgently.
“We know. It’s in a very safe place. My name is Mohammad this is Charlie and the young lady is Shelley. She can’t speak your language.”
Another man walked up beside my bed, he had a long cloak like outfit with an odd rope like device hanging around his neck.
“The physician would like to examine you,” Charlie said, I noticed his accent had been improving by leaps and bounds.
I said it would be alright.
He poked and prodded me, then put the weird device in his ears and the other end against my chest. It suddenly occurred to me he was listening to the beats of my heart.
I thought it odd that after six thousand years physicians still did the exact same things.
The three of them held a long discussion with the physician after he was finished examining me.
Charlie turned to me and said, “you will be able to leave tomorrow.”
The physician left.
“I have something for you,” he gave me a large shiny sack that looked to be full of fine papyrus sheets, “you won’t be able to read them but you can look at the pictures.”
I reached in and pulled out a sheaf of pages, they were folded and bound with shiny bronze needles. I flipped through it curiously, the pictures were impossibly real and showed the most amazing things.
“We will be back tomorrow, be sure to rest,” Charlie said.
The three of them left me alone.
I examined all the papyri intently, I couldn’t read the language but noticed the words all had spaces in between them. I suddenly felt very stupid, this seemed like such a profoundly obvious way to write.
I had always gotten headaches reading in scarce light or when I was tired. These spaces would have made comprehension much easier.
The pictures showed cities so incredible as to defy belief, there were also massive flying machines and ships the size of small mountains.
I saw devices that were like small windowed cabins with circular black objects attached to each corner, they appeared to travel on wide gray roads.
It was all too fantastic for me to comprehend, I suddenly felt a profound exhaustion settle into my bones and I fell fast asleep.
It was morning. I ate the weird tasteless meal one of the strangely garbed people had left on my little movable table. I was happy the three strangers were going to pick me up soon. Even with all the ingenious devices and the interesting and unusual furniture I found this place very depressing for some reason.
It was not long before the three of them were beside my bed. They had brought a beautiful leather bag full of clothing. The two men left and Shelley stayed showing me how to put on the clothes properly.
I found them very restricting but the material was soft and fit me well.
When we were done dressing Charlie and Mohammad came back bringing a chair that seemed to glide across the floor, there were large round devices attached to each side and they seemed to turn as the chair moved.
I suddenly had an eruption of understanding, my mind spun with the concept. This was the idea of a profound genius, spinning disks to support and move a large weight.
A million thoughts roared through my heart, a device pulled by animals, putting a rope around it to lift weights.
I stared mesmerized rubbing my fingers over the black sticky substance that lined the outside edge.
The three of them looked at me with worried expressions.
“What’s the matter Kem?” Charlie asked.
“What are these called? Who thought them up?” I said.
Shelley’s face suddenly lit up and she started talking quickly in their harsh language.
The two men’s expressions changed from worry to realization.
“They are called wheels, no one knows who invented them, it was over five thousand years ago,” Mohammad said.
“They must have changed the course of history,” I said.
Charlie had an odd expression on his face, “Yes… I guess they did.”
I sat down in the wheeled chair as excited as a young child, Shelley stood behind me and started to push it.
“Faster! Faster!” I yelled, unable to control myself.
She seemed to understand me and increased the speed.
We emerged from a large building. I touched the transparent stone panels that had been inserted into the doors to let light in. They were of much higher quality than I had ever found.
I had only been able to find small boulders and they all had fractures running through them after I had sliced the rock into panels
.
They led me to one of the wheeled cabins I had seen pictures of, I got in the back door and sat on a comfortable seat. Shelley put a large belt like device over me. I assumed it was to keep us in our seats as we flew along at incredible speeds.
“So I see that sorcery is common place now,” I said trying not to look too impressed as the vehicle accelerated onto the road smoothly and almost soundlessly.
“It’s not sorcery, you’ll learn soon enough. We can’t do the things you do, not even close,” Charlie said.
“But the flying ships, the light panels in my room,” I said confused.
“They do not work the same way.
We have another problem, things are kind of crazy here now. The people are rebelling against their government. We must leave but you have no documents to be able to board a flying ship.”
“I can conjure us to appear somewhere else, It must be a place that I have been to before and hasn’t changed.” I said.
Charlie smiled, “The place where you sent us to see the sunrise.”
“I can do that, I need my bracelet though.”
“It is in a safe at the Inn we are staying at.”
I noticed two enormous crumbling pyramids appear occasionally between the tall buildings we passed. I could tell they had been built in my era being made of large stone blocks.
The vanity of Kings was immeasurable, I knew in my heart these had to be tombs. They had never learned, they had just built bigger and better mounds.
“Those are plundered tombs?” I pointed to the edifices.
“How did you know?” Mohammad had a surprised expression on his face.
“If you bury valuable things and mark the spot so everyone can see, people will steal them, even six thousand years ago.”
“Oh, so it was obvious even then.”
“Did it ever work?” I asked, curious.
“The mounds and pyramids were all plundered, the Kings then switched to underground rooms. That worked three times, but two of the tombs were badly damaged by water. The one that survived was only partially plundered, we think a landslide hid the location afterwards.”
“I’ll bet its empty now,” I said cynically.
Again Mohammad had a surprised look on his face, “it’s complicated, the Kings body is still there but all his things have been moved for display. The government owns them.”
“At least they are serving some useful purpose now,” I replied.
The vehicle stopped in front of a towering building, there was a group of men in some kind of uniform in front of the doors.
“They are soldiers?” I asked.
Charlie and Mohammad laughed, “No, they will carry your luggage and open the door if you pay them.”
“Oh. I will give them some money then,” I said as I searched my clothes for a copper deben. I suddenly realized where I was and felt my face go warm in embarrassment.
Shelley gave me a colorful piece of papyrus.
“That’s money here,” Mohammad said.
“How does it last?” I remembered all the problems we had storing papyrus, it would rot if it was near water or got wet.
“It’s not papyrus, it’s made from a different kind of plant and it lasts a long time. We call it paper.”
We left the vehicle, I carried my new leather bag, onto the side of the road. One of the men walked over and picked it up.
We followed behind him as he walked to the door of the building and opened it for us. I handed him the money and he gave me my bag back with a bright smile on his face.
We entered a small room with sliding doors, Charlie pressed one of the round buttons on the wall and I felt the room move upwards.
I suddenly remembered my idea of the wheel and rope to lift heavy weights. The button must signal a group of men to pull the rope, lifting us up!
I suddenly had an inkling of what Charlie meant when he said that they didn’t use sorcery.
I followed the group into a large room that had an extremely large comfortable looking bed. There was also a variety of fine wooden furniture and chairs. I noticed a large rectangular device that looked like a picture frame with around a flat slate stone.
Charlie picked up a small device with colorful buttons all over it and pointed it at the framed slate and a bright picture suddenly appeared, It was of a large group of people rioting in a wide building lined street.
I looked closer and realized the people were moving. How could this not be sorcery?
“It’s a revolution, it’s happening all over the Middle East,” Charlie said.
“What are they revolting against?”
“The government, they want democracy.”
“What’s democracy?”
“It’s when everybody votes for their leader.”
I contemplated this for a moment, obviously things had changed quite a bit. I had grown up in an era of callous and vain Kings who believed in their Devine right to rule. I knew they would have killed thousands without remorse to stay in power.
“Won’t the king send soldiers to kill them all?” I said.
“The Black land is not a powerful kingdom anymore, he risks interference from much more powerful lands if he does this,” Charlie said.
I heard a harsh sound like the ringing of a bell, Mohammad put a small instrument to his ear and started to talk in the harsh language.
He finished the conversation after a few seconds, and then started to talk to Charlie with a sense of urgency.
“We have to go now, the tomb master has gotten wind of you and is on his way,” Mohammad said to me.
“The tomb master?”
“He looks after all the monuments for the government.”
Charlie had opened up one of the doors on a large piece of furniture revealing another smaller sturdy looking door with a dial on it. He spun the dial in different directions then moved a small lever causing the door to open.
He reached inside and pulled out a small paper sack and tossed it to me. I looked inside and saw my bracelet.
I put it on my wrist. I suddenly had the same feeling I would get when I clothed in the morning. I had carried my little magical tool on my wrist for many years and would only take it off on rare occasions.
I was quite proud of it for it enabled me to cast many different types of spells effortlessly. I had spent months designing and perfecting it, it worked by flipping the little squares it was made of in different orders to get the desired spell.
The specific order was in a kind of language that was only known to me, however a curious person flipping the squares randomly could unwittingly summon disaster making it quite dangerous.
“We must gather our things in an open area and then stand close together,” I said.
They pushed the bed to the wall and gathered all the luggage in a pile, Shelley and Charlie quickly checked the room to make sure they had missed nothing.
We gathered into a group around the luggage. I started flipping the squares on my bracelet to prepare the proper spell.
“Is there going to be a blinding flash?” Charlie asked with an annoyed expression on his face.
I felt a surge of anger rise in me, how dare he question me, I thought to myself, I am a powerful sorcerer.
I was about to remind him to whom he was talking to when I noticed the people on the moving picture device being assaulted by uniformed men with shields and large clubs.
A feeling of shame rose in my heart.
Ah… the vanity of sorcerers.
“The spell won’t work without it,” I said, lying to him.
I flipped the last square closing my eyes.
I opened my eyes and looked around, we were on the stone hill I had first visited many years ago. The landscape had hardly changed in six thousand years, the only difference appeared to be a few thin roads and small buildings in the distance.
“How are we going to get down?” Shelley asked.
I smiled to myself as my fingers danced over my bracelet.
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“Look over there,” I pointed to a black dot in the sky.
The dot became larger and larger until I could see the outline of my trusty little flying ship appear.
I had modified it quite a bit since my first journey around the earth, it was much larger now and had a sturdier awning.
The ship glided silently until it was beside me then it stopped hovering two cubits above the ground.
I walked over to the side and pulled down a small set of stairs, another one of my modifications.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
The three of them picked up the luggage and climbed the stairs boarding the ship. I followed behind them pulling up the stairs.
Charlie pulled out a device similar to what I had seen Mohammad talking into. He stared at it intently while moving his thumb over it in jerky movements.
“There’s a town north of here with an airport, we should be able to rent a car,” he said.
“Why can’t we fly?” I said confused,” I have seen many flying craft so mine shouldn’t seem unusual.”
“They don’t work like yours, and they’re incredibly noisy,” he replied.
Shelley laughed and said a word that sounded like ewe ef owe.
I sat down in front of the ships control levers pulled the proper one and launched it into the sky, I turned north and accelerated.
The three of them seemed mesmerized as I flew across the landscape. I flew low about a hundred cubits above the ground and kept my speed low so that only a stiff breeze moved across my face.
It seemed unbelievable to me that people that had flown in mighty metal birds would be impressed by my ancient wooden flyer. They had all moved to the bow and had thrust their faces over the railing into the wind.
“Be careful,” I yelled out nervously.
After a short time I saw a large city in the distance, to the south there was a group of large buildings which had winged flyers lined up beside of them.
I lowered my altitude until I was just a few cubits from the ground and slowed down to walking speed. I came as close to the flying complex as I could without someone seeing us then stopped.
We then dismounted my ship carrying our possessions, I used my bracelet to send my craft away.
“Where does it go?” Mohammad asked.
“It goes back to the city you all visited,” I said.
“How?”
“It’s magic.”
I started to feel tremendously tired suddenly, and a dull pain started to radiate from my abdomen.
“I have to rest,” I said, feeling my legs give away.
Mohammad dropped his bags and grabbed me before I fell. He then scooped me up in his arms carrying me.
Charlie and Shelley picked up his bags.
“We’ll rent a room so you can rest,” Charlie said.
“Is the pestilence coming back?” I said worried.
“No. It wasn’t pestilence anyway, it was a piece of your intestine,” he pronounced a long word I didn’t understand,” they cut it out and gave you powerful drugs for your fever. The physicians were very surprised the medicine worked, we think it’s because the bugs inside you were so old they hadn’t learned to outwit the drugs yet.”
“What are these bugs?” I said alarmed. I started thinking of the large variety of flies that burrowed into human flesh.
“They are too small to see, they cause almost all illnesses,” Charlie looked at me for a moment, “you are going to have an awful lot to learn Kem, don’t be discouraged.”
I was too tired to be discouraged. It was a only a short while later before I was lying on the most comfortable bed I had ever felt and was fast asleep.
I woke up the next morning with Ra shining through the window. I felt much better lying in the midst of all the soft blankets and pillows, I wondered how people waking in the midst of all this comfort could ever get out of bed.
I noticed a moving picture window hanging on the wall across from my bed, I saw the control device sitting on a small table beside the bed.
I picked it up and began pressing buttons randomly. I soon learned which button turned the device on and off and found that there were many different windows that could be accessed.
I flipped through the windows curious at what they would show. I stopped on one for a moment and was startled to see my name in hieroglyphs in a little square next to a woman who was staring at me while she was speaking.
The scene then changed showing the large black granite block sitting in the midst of a sandy desert. I realized with a shock that it was my tomb that they were showing.
The scene changed again showing a corpse that had been prepared for the afterlife and then it switched once more showing large flying machine leaving the ground.
I had thankfully designed all the spells used in my tomb to go dormant if my body was ever removed from my sarcophagus, and the block of granite would bear even the closest scrutiny.
I did wonder why anyone would have any interest in me though.
I checked some more windows and found another one that was showing my tomb, this time the scene changed to an angry middle aged man yelling and pointing in the midst of a group of people holding little sticks with balls on the end of them.
The tomb master? I thought.
He looked very familiar, with a jolt I realized he was the spitting image of Paser the construction foreman on the Kings tomb, even his gestures were the same.
I wondered for a moment if people lived many lives through the ages, I suddenly felt sad, if that was true this poor man was still stuck looking after the tombs of vain kings.
I heard a light knock at the room’s door.
“Enter, I am not naked,” I said.
When Shelley had dressed me the day before, I had gleaned from her gestures that nakedness was an appalling thing in this time. I had observed many strange customs in my travels and had learned through hard experience not to ignore them.
Charlie walked in to my room closing the door behind him.
“I see you’ve been watching the news,” he said.
“What is happening?”
“The tomb master thinks we found your tomb and stole all the artifacts. The government here is looking for us.”
“Do they know I’m alive?”
“I don’t think so, I told my digging crew that you were a tomb robber and had been seriously hurt.”
“Digging crew?”
“The three of us look for ancient artifacts, that’s our job and that is how we found you.”
“So what are we to do?” I asked.
“I will send you away with Shelley, they don’t know about her yet. Then Mohammad and I will turn ourselves in. They have no evidence that we did anything wrong. We have to leave soon, I will send Shelley in to show you how the bathroom works.”
With that Charlie left the room.
Shelley knocked on my door a few minutes later, she led me to the bathroom with its large basin and bowls.
I had already managed to figure out which bowl was the toilet, I had even tentatively pressed the lever on the strange backrest and watched as the water I had peed in disappear in a roaring swirling waterfall.
Shelley showed me a small soft bar and a bottle of orange liquid, she then turned the levers next to wall of the large basin causing a large flow of water to cascade down.
She helped me undress and peeled back the bandage over the wound in my abdomen.
I could see it had been closed by a skilled physician, the stitches were evenly sown neatly holding the skin together. There was no sign of pestilence either, I would have to pick up some honey to smear on it just to be careful.
Shelley put a thin transparent material over the wound and held it in place with sticky strips of linen, she then led me into the stream of water and handed me the small bar. The bar started to get slippery when it got wet.
I learned very quickly how to use the soap and shampoo, I was also starting to learn more and more words of
English.
I was so clean I squeaked, when I was finished I wrapped myself in a large towel Shelley then gave me a little brush for my teeth and a tube of paste. I needed no instruction to use these, I normally used a wooden stick that had been chewed on one end to soften and separate the fibers into a small brush.
The paste was quite similar to the powder I normally used, it even had mint leaves in it although of a very poor quality.