Chapter Twenty-Two: The Great Chain of Being

 

 

***

 

Imhotep’s guards shoved the Med Jai unceremoniously to the floor.  He crouched, holding his side in pain where the guards had kicked him repeatedly.  He let out a low moan, holding his head.

 

Imhotep regarded him suspiciously.  He was wearing the dark robes of the Med Jai, but he didn’t look to be more than eighteen, twenty years old at most.

 

The mummy guard gave him another kick and the Med Jai fell to his side, holding his bruises and moaning.

 

“Enough,” Imhotep commanded briskly, walking around the fallen man, examining him from above.  He was young and had all of the ceremonial tattoos, so he clearly was as the messenger had said–a surviving Med Jai.  Imhotep looked more closely at the man’s injuries.  He was bruised and slightly bloodied, but he would certainly survive.

 

“Stand him up,” Imhotep ordered, and immediately the Med Jai was standing before him, held up by the two guards.  The desert warrior slumped against the mummies, exhausted and without any strength of his own.

 

Imhotep examined him further.  Finally, he spoke.  “You are a Med Jai?”

 

The wounded man nodded pitifully.

 

“What is your name?”

 

“Adil,” the young man breathed, trying not to speak for the pain in his chest.

 

“Where have you come from?”  Imhotep asked.

 

“The desert,” Adil muttered, trying to ignore the throbbing in his side.  “I have been wandering–”

 

“Yes?” Imhotep prompted.

 

“I have been wandering for so long,” the Med Jai got out, slumping further.

 

Imhotep decided to try a different tactic.  “You know the man Ardeth Bay?”

 

A brief smile flickered across the man’s face, for a second masking the exhaustion and pain.  “Yes, I did.  He was a great man.”

Imhotep paused.  “Was?”

 

The Med Jai nodded, his head drooping.  “Praise be to Allah he did not live to see this.”

 

Imhotep felt so relieved, he was surprised at himself.  He hadn’t even admitted to himself how much he feared Ardeth Bay.  “When did he die?”

 

The Med Jai lowered his head.  “With everyone else when you attacked our villages.”

 

A self-satisfied smile spread over the Priest’s face.  “How many people survived?”

 

Adil’s knees buckled and the guards had to hoist him up again.  He did not respond.

 

“How many are dead, Med Jai?” Imhotep demanded.

 

Adil refused to respond, staring into the Priest’s eyes.

 

“Answer me, dog, or I will have you killed,” Imhotep stated calmly.

 

“I won’t,” Adil gasped out, “be of much use to you then.”

 

Imhotep smirked.  “Let me make this clear, Med Jai.  I have twenty-two of your comrades in my slave quarters.  If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll have all of you killed.”

 

Adil’s eyes widened.

 

“Do you understand me?” the Priest asked icily.

 

Adil nodded.

 

“Then tell me what I want to know.”

 

The Med Jai hesitated.  Finally, he spoke.  When he did, his eyes were lowered in shame.  His entire body shook with humiliation.  “They are all dead.  There were only a few survivors.  All of the women and children died.  I wandered–”

 

Silence engulfed the room.  “Seat him,” Imhotep ordered, and Adil was placed, none too gently, into a chair.  The guards stood beside his slack form.

 

Finally, Adil continued.  “I wandered, for so long.  There were four of us.  We were the only ones left.  We were vagabonds, with no home, no people.  We lived like wildmen in the desert.  I, I sometimes think I was mad, we all were.  Our hair and beards grew, we dug scrapes in the sand, we hardly knew each other.  We had nothing–” his voice broke.  “We wandered for weeks on the brink of madness–”

 

Imhotep regarded him carefully, and Adil missed the twinge of–what was it?–empathy?–that flicked across his features.  But it was gone as quickly as it had come.

 

“And then one day I came to and I was alone.  They had died, or wandered off to die alone.  The desert had swallowed them–” Adil squeezed his eyes shut to push away all of the memories.

 

Imhotep nodded grimly.  “Enough.”  He turned to his guards.  “Take him to the infirmary.  When he’s recovered, take him to the slave quarters and introduce him to his new duties.”

 

The guards grabbed and dragged Adil out of the library.  As they pulled his heavy form down the hall, Imhotep missed the brief look that graced his features.  Adil smiled, a smile of weary triumph.  Then, it was gone.

 

***

 

Imhotep sat down in a plush chair, mulling over the arrival of the Med Jai–what was his name?–Adil 

 

So the Med Jai were all dead, Imhotep thought with a sneer.  After three millennia of trying to escape their clutches, he had finally triumphed.  After three millennia of trying to destroy him, he had finally succeeded in destroying them.  He could almost laugh at the irony.

 

Well, he could breathe easier now.  He didn’t have to worry about some pathetic Med Jai attack.  He had always had a little niggling fear about escaped Mad Jai, because they were the only ones who knew the power of the books.  But now he was invincible: He had possession of the Gold Book.  Nefertiri, her Med Jai, and their son were enslaved.  And Ardeth Bay and all of the Med Jai were dead.  There was no one left to threaten him.

 

Now Imhotep could relax.

 

He stood up suddenly, going and checking his reflection carefully in the golden mirror.  He knew exactly where he would go.

 

***

 

“Anck-su-namun,” he murmured, coming across her in her chambers.

 

She was listlessly reading a scroll.  “Imhotep,” she said, her face brightening momentarily.  But the shine left her features almost as soon as it had come.

 

“What ails you, my love?” he murmured, sitting down beside her.

 

“I am well, I am well,” she responded, smiling slightly.  “I’m happy now that you’re here.”

 

“I know you’ve been lonely,” he said regretfully.  “I thought the translations would help–” he said, gesturing to the discarded scroll, a translation of one of Plato’s philosophical writings.

 

She half-smiled.  “Indeed, it was very thoughtful of you.  But, you know, I have never been a great reader, nor philosopher.”

 

He started.  “Of course, I’m sorry, I just asked them to translate the first document they had–oh, I will ask them to do another–can you forgive me?”

 

The sweet look on his face, and his desire to please her, softened her heart, and she reached forward and clasped his hand within her own small one.  “Of course I forgive you,” she said teasingly, “but you would be the one suffering if I keeled over suddenly and died from boredom.”

 

“I would never forgive myself,” he said seriously, and a thought flashed through Anck-su-namun’s mind: had he completely lost his sense of humor?  They never really laughed together like they used to.

 

“I am thinking of traveling soon to the Americas, love,” he began, changing topics.  “There have been some publications, some leaflets and pamphlets scattered on the streets, that–well, they’re propaganda, really.  They have to be stopped.”

 

“What do they say?” Anck-su-namun asked curiously.

 

“They encourage people to disobey me, to resist my rule,” Imhotep said reluctantly, wanting to shield her forever, but completely unable to lie to her.

 

This was no true surprise.  Anck-su-namun had overheard enough from his advisors and translators and enough from the gossip of the palace slaves to know that many people resented Imhotep’s rise to power and his methods for governing the world.

 

“Well, what are their grievances?” she asked.  “Perhaps you should listen and grant them some of their wishes.”  Even in the Ancient days of the Pharaohs, rulers had periodically listened to petitions from commoners and even occasionally granted requests. 

 

Imhotep looked at her like she was insane.  “I cannot do that, Anck-su-namun.”

 

She was surprised.  “Why not?”

 

“Because if I give them one concession, they will want a thousand others, all leading to my removal from power!  Don’t you see that the world must be ruled with an iron fist?”

 

“But Imhotep,” she began, “some of these people have suffered greatly.  You had such compassion for the hurt and the sick in the old days.  Don’t you remember?”

 

“Yes,” he retorted, “I remember.  But caring for the sick and tolerating uprisings are completely different things.”

“But perhaps if you granted them some of their needs, made their lives a little easier, they would not fight you.”

 

“You have such compassion for the conquered masses,” Imhotep responded bitterly, “and yet you do not remember that I did care for them.  I made sure there were hospitals and schools and manual labor jobs for all.  I have given them many things, and they are ungrateful!”

 

“But darling,” Anck-su-namun began, patting his arm, “you know that they do not want only your hospitals and schools.  What they want is what all human beings want, what we ourselves wanted, freedom a–”

 

“Enough!”  Imhotep exploded, standing up angrily.  “What is the point of ruling the world if my word is not law?!”

 

Anck-su-namun gasped and her hands flew to cover her mouth.  She shrunk from him, shocked at his outburst.  He had never yelled at her like that before.  Where was the old Imhotep, the man she had loved, the man who had love and compassion and generosity in his heart?

 

“Imhotep...” she whispered, her face full of uncertainty and pain.  “You frighten me sometimes.”  She looked up at him closely, the next words tumbling out of her mouth before she could help herself.  “You are not the same–”

 

They sent a shiver running down his spine.  So it had come to this.

 

He slowly backed away from her, his mind whirling with possible explanations.  But only one thought ran through his confused mind.

 

She understood that he was no longer the old Imhotep: the man he had been in Ancient times, the man she had fallen in love with, the man she had died for.  Imhotep’s heart wrenched in pain as he turned and fled down the hallway.  He could hear Anck-su-namun calling after him, but he could not stop.  He strode down the corridors, his mind whirling furiously, her words seared into his brain.  “You are not the same.”  They echoed, taunting and tormenting him.

 

He came to am abrupt halt in front of a large bronze mirror.  He paused, staring at his reflection.  His handsome, unruffled countenance was always the same, his body fit and trim as ever.  He looked like a king, every inch a Pharaoh.  But what was he now, really?

 

He was human and God, man and demon.  He was all, yet he was none.  There were no words to describe what Imhotep had become.

 

A part of him was truly human–the part that loved with fierce abandon, the part that was arrogant and cruel, the part that desired revenge–the part that felt compassion for Nefertiri and her Med Jai. 

 

But there was the part of him that felt nothing as he swept a million soldiers into the sea.  The part of him that could move mountains with a flick of his wrist.  The inner part of his heart that was laced through with hatred and callous indifference.

 

His fingertips could scrape the rim of the heavens, but his soul was trapped in the underworld.

 

He owned the world, yet he was not happy with the love of his life.  Why?  Why could he not be happy on earth?  Even as he asked the question, the answer snaked through him, slicing his heart with its cold truth.  Because this world is not your world...

 

Her words echoed in his mind.  “Ah, Anck-su-namun,” he whispered.  “I am not who I was...”

 

And Imhotep, damned High Priest of Osiris, Ruler of the world, Pharaoh of the Day and the Night, found himself on an earth that was no longer his own.  Surely this was some ultimate joke played by the Gods themselves, and he could almost feel the breath of their laughter on his burnt back.  He had all he could desire.  But he was a man without a home.  He was a man without a rightful place in the universe.

 

Imhotep shuddered, turning his face away from the glass.  His face was half visible in the torchlight, but the other half was masked in the shadows.

 

He did not belong in the great chain of being...

 

 

***

 

Far from the strife and pain of human life, in a room of blue and gold, the Ancient Gods continued their discussion of the fate of the earth.

 

“You have said you would plead the case of the Priest and the Concubine.  What have you to say?” the Goddess asked, the words flowing silkily through the air.

 

The second voice answered after a pause, a fragment of sound in the wind.  “I have always felt a...sympathy for him.  His follies have been those of humankind–arrogance, ambition, desire, and above all, love.”

 

There was silence, the two eternal bodies contemplating the words that still hung in the air.  “It is as you say,” the first voice answered languidly.  “But the Priest has gone too far.  His purposes served our own, at least for a time.  But the terror must end.”

 

“Using the powers of darkness to serve the powers of light?” the second voice asked wryly, sounding ephemeral and yet...as though it possessed a trace of humanity.

 

“Indeed, sometimes it is necessary, daughter,” the first voice responded calmly.  “The Priest believed in us, and so for a short while we gave him power.  But he does not belong in the world.  He no longer has a place there.  Perhaps...I misjudged him.”  The voice paused, considering its own words.  “It is true that he believes he serves us with his bloodshed.  But it is not so.”

 

“But is blood not sometimes the required sacrifice?” the ethereal voice responded with a hint of a challenge.

 

Pleased, the first voice continued.  “You indeed are learning.  Blood is the ultimate sacrifice we can demand, and sometimes only it will slake our need.  But blood is like life and death: inevitable and necessary, but only in the natural order of the world.  Blood split out of turn disrupts the great chain of being.  This we cannot allow.”

 

“I understand.  So what of their fate?” the first voice asked slightly impatiently, although unmistakably the voice of a God.

 

“This, I can say: fate has turned the great wheel seven times, each soul a spoke on the wheel of life.  Without even one of the ancient souls the wheel will not turn...

 

“But it spins again, as they have found each other once again...around and around, like the winding in and out of the shuttle, back and forth and the golden thread turns to cloth...”  The voice trailed off, a mere whisper in the wind.  “Each has been many things: peasant, slave, mother, father, warrior, lover, leader.  They have each lived many lives, but after long last they have found each other once again...” the voice, filmy and luminous, repeated the haunting phrase.

 

The intonation continued, answering her partner’s unspoken question.  “I cannot say how the story will end, daughter.  You know that we cannot control the intertwining lives that humans weave with each other.  Their fate lies together, but the ultimate destiny they create for themselves is their own.”

 

“So the journey has been written, but not the destination,” the second voice observed, the melodious sounds twisting and winding together in the air.

 

The divinity responded, the words flowing like silk, ethereal and wholly beautiful.  “They have the ancient tools.  What they do with them is beyond our reach...” A close listener would have heard the glimmer of a smile reflected in her words.

 

The voice continued, sweet and tinkling, like the sound of distant wood chimes.  “After long last they have found each other once again...the wheel spins for the final time...

 

 

***