COINCIDENCE THEORY
By
Steven Allinson
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Copyright Steven Allinson 2012
All Rights Reserved
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Chapter 1
A swirl of wind languished across the parched sands of the Egyptian desert. The microscopic remains of countless creatures, which flourished in the mild seas that once covered these lands, dusted around the lone traveller as he staggered across the heavy dunes toward his goal.
In every way it was possible to be, Amjad was scared. His short, muscular frame shook with the exertions of the past few days and his rough, tool-worn hands were covered in the scars of repeated, violent encounters.
Amjad stumbled across the wastes, tumbling once before righting clumsily, as he willed himself onward. He would not be stopped this day. Not now. Not after so much was completed in the name of his task.
Amjad’s thoughts turned to his wife and children. How he wished he could hold them. He could still see the tears flowing down their beautiful faces as the Pharaoh’s men came and punished them for his transgressions. That one moment, more than any other reason he now held, drove him on. If they were lost to him, as the wound on his neck now told him they were, he would finish what he started. Only upon his labour’s finality would he and his bloodline be given the peace and reverence his new God promised.
The next dune rose before Amjad and blotted out the sun. Its sheer crest and dusty peak seemed to grow as he fought his way up its unsure slope. As he climbed, the air began to swell and the fine silt that once pelted his legs now danced from the surface and spiralled upward. The wind was changing. With a sense of deep foreboding, he instinctively knew a sandstorm was approaching.
Amjad turned and stared into the shimmering distance, ripping the wound on his neck open and precipitating another issuance of blood down his chest. Clasping the laceration, he prayed his pursuant was far behind him, lost to the furious desert storm now heading his way.
He tore another strip of fabric from his vestments and did his best to cleanse the rough material of sand. He placed the makeshift bandage against the wound, as the tingle of remaining salt sent a wave of pain through his faltering body.
A few days hence, Amjad was but a simple stonemason. He learnt his trade from his father, and he from his. They were renowned in the area and treated as masters of their art. He was selected to create some of the most intricate and subtle works of his new Pharaoh, a privilege that would follow his progeny for all time.
When he was young, Amjad and his father worked at the old quarry on the edge of the plateau. One day, after completing his first foundation stone, his father turned from his own work to make the final inspection. The heat coalesced in that airless pit was extraordinary that day, as it had been for many years since. He watched as his father crouched down and carefully scrutinised his work. The rounded disc of stone Amjad had produced was not grand, but it was the most important part of a new pillar in the Great City of Mit Rahina. It needed to be exact. He could remember his worry, as his father circled the large rock, his buffing stone still clasped in his warped fingers, searching for even the most minor of imperfections. The joy he felt as his father rose, a beaming smile spread far over his face, was one of the keenest memories he held. The stone was perfect. It was the day he, Amjad son of Amut, became a man in his own right.
That evening, as he, his father, and the other masons celebrated his coming of age, a conversation started that would change his life forever.
Amjad’s father, partially inebriated by wine, slurred out a message about a secret the men of his household held. He refused to divulge more at the time, but said that all would become clear soon. However, that day never came.
His father died after the harvest. A graze, no more than a shallow cut caused by a copper chisel, became infested with the rotting green. The speed at which the foul illness spread throughout his father’s stout frame was shocking. Only seven days after the nick appeared he was bedridden. A few days later, his father could not swallow. Until, one cold evening, his father, the man he looked up to for guidance more than any other, began his journey into the afterlife.
The reasons for the strange conversation he and his father shared never registered until the day after his burial. Sitting alone, crying as he adorned the simple tomb with details of his achievements in the quiet of their family’s simple pirjyt, Amjad stumbled upon the work of his grandfather.
The drawings that lay around his grandfather’s resting place were delicate; thinly drawn lines on thick reed parchment. The pictures were descriptive, markers for ideas that could not be fully rationalised.
On the sheet was a drawing of the Great Monument; the immense pyramid supposedly built by one of the first kings of his great land. However, the image showed more. It seemed to depict a series of corridors, fanning throughout its interior, interlinking a collection of chambers. Next to each, a symbol, not unlike the writings he had transposed many times onto burial stones, rested by the chamber’s side, not written as they would be for death. They seemed specifically positioned as if to show association, but to what Amjad could not be sure.
Amjad stared, uncertain of what he was looking at, but knowing some small part of his father’s secret had been uncovered.
Driven by a need to discover the truth behind the images, Amjad spent many hours talking to the other artisans and their sons about their efforts upon the Great Monument. Until eventually, after months of painstaking work, the information began to resolve.
With everything he needed in order to finish the work collected, Amjad began to carve miniature representations of the stones he knew were constructed, until, not long ago whilst working in the late evening twilight, he finally finished the last.
Amjad could remember how, with trembling hands, he placed the three objects into the casket and set the last of the larger blocks over the chamber. It was only then he realised what his father had concealed from him, the thought that beset him a mixture of elation and deep sadness.
Amjad shook the thoughts from his mind. What had happened before was now only memory. To honour his father and secure his family’s place in the Duat, he must focus on the here and now.
Reaching the top of a dune, Amjad looked out across the endless sands towards his destination. Even in the failing light of day, he could see the Great Monuments looming on the horizon.
Amjad reached out to the pouch that hung across his shoulder and felt through to the objects that lay within. Collecting them was far more difficult than he could have imagined, but the deed was done. Feeling warmth as he made contact, he relaxed, safe in the knowledge that their retrieval and delivery was almost assured.
In his travels, he had retrieved these three ancient artefacts from some of the most glorious edifices ever created by man’s hands.
The first, a majestic golden staff, he recovered from the priests of Iunu. The temple complex they inhabited, his land’s most holy place. He did not want to injure the men, but they would not give him what he needed. He had no choice. He had never killed anyone before, and the feeling it gave him to recall their passing chilled him to his core.
Retrieving the second artefact was easier. The impossibly detailed carving of the snake’s head was stored in a box at the back of the temple of Ra in the great city. After causing a distraction, he slipped in unnoticed; the ureaus removed before anyone became aware, or that was what he believed.
Arriving at the pyramid at Meidum to recover the third artefact, he met a woman from a land more distant than any he knew. They spoke for hours, her voice so soothing he felt sure he would drift into sleep just listening to her. Eventually, he sum
moned enough courage to press his point and she reluctantly agreed to take him to the Al-Fayoum oasis to meet the man who possessed what he required.
The man they found by the edges of the still lake was older than he could imagine possible. Shock-white hair trailed down from his brow, almost to his knees, and the lines and furrows of his face were extensive. He talked in a crackled whisper, the woman only ever calling him by a strange title, The Seer.
The pair talked throughout most of the morning, gossiping and laughing about numerous trivialities. He did not have time to waste with their discussions; he needed what the Seer carried.
Distracted by their banal banter, the pair never noticed Amjad retrieve the small bag of creamy powder from his pouch. Not knowing how much to use, he poured all of what he had been given into the jug of wine they shared, and then waited. Two gulps later, both the Seer and the woman’s limp forms lay sprawled out over the rug, a bubbling froth issuing from their cracked lips. Not wanting to witness their ends, he took what he needed and slipped out of the back of the tent to avoid the pair’s entourage. It was then he was struck to the ground.
Amjad’s assailant was a bodyguard of the Pharaoh, a powerful and frightening man, with a lithe, muscular body and a fear-inducing bravado.
Amjad could still feel the cruel edge of the blade as it was pulled from his neck, his cries of panic alerting the guards busying themselves outside the tents.
Making haste whilst his attacker toiled under their onslaught, he untied the horses in the camp, jumping on the back of one and shooing the others into the distance.
Doing everything he could to stem the flow of blood from his neck, he watched in horror as his pursuant began to carve his way through the men in the camp with ease.
Amjad scanned his environs for shelter, as the first howl of the approaching sandstorm fired his urgency. Peering into the distance, he spied a boulder, a rough outcrop of rock that lay on the far edge of a sandstone bluff. If he could reach it, it would protect him and his precious cargo from the storm.
How he wished he still had that horse. The beast would have covered the distance in no time. He regretted pushing it so hard this morning. He regretted not stopping and giving it a rest or any of his water. However, he could spend time regretting a great many things, but none of it would save him. Only he could do that now.
Tortured moments passed, as the distant sound turned into a great roar, which snarled at his heels. His heart pounded and his body shook violently as he fought his fear. He would not turn back. He could not.
As Amjad jogged down the last dune before the bluff, his sanctuary became visible. The rock was curved, etched by the abrasive desert sands. At its foot was a low overhang, a shelf no more than a knee’s length from the ground and an arm’s length deep.
Removing his sleeping roll from his back and wrapping the thick material around his torso, Amjad flung himself into the space.
He could hear the sand begin to spatter against his back, as he curled into a ball and pressed the material tightly against the rock to preserve his breathing space.
Praying to his new God for deliverance, Amjad steeled himself for the onslaught. If he could survive this, his great mission and all the works of his family would be but a fleeting moment from completion.
Chapter 2