The Mammoth Book of Sorceror's Tales by Mike Ashley

Author:Mike Ashley [Ashley, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780333618
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

III

For a long time I lay still and listened to the water lapping against the side of the boat. Then even that sound faded, and I felt, very distinctly, the boat reverse direction, and I knew I was drifting with the black current now, out of the world of the living, into the land of the dead. The water was silent, as if the boat were gliding along a river of oil. I could hear the pounding of my own heart.

I lay awake and tried to make sense out of my adventure with the Sybil, reviewing every detail in search of some central thread by which all the parts would be connected, like beads on a necklace, assuming form and meaning. But there was nothing. I had expected as much. It is the way of prophecies: you don’t understand them until they’re about to come true, and then, suddenly, the whole pattern is revealed.

Even the silence of the river and the thunder of my heart were part of the pattern.

Even my sister’s voice.

I thought it was just a ringing in my ears at first, but it formed words, very weak, very far away, at the very threshold of hearing.

“Sekenre,” she said. “Help me. I’m lost.”

I called back to her, either with my voice or my mind.

“I am coming, little one. Wait for me.”

She sobbed hoarsely, sucking in breath as if she had been crying for a long time.

“It’s dark here.”

“It’s dark here, too,” I said gently.

She was too brave to say she was afraid.

“Hamakina – is Father with you?”

Something splashed in the water right next to the boat, and my father’s voice whispered, inches from my ear.

“Sekenre, if you love me, go back. I command you to go back! Do not come here!”

I let out a yell and sat up. The grave coins fell into my lap. I twisted about, looking all around.

The boat slid past huge, black reeds. In the silent darkness, white herons stood in rows along the river’s edge, faintly glowing as the Sybil’s face had glowed. And in the water, the evatim watched me, rank upon rank of them like dead-white, naked men with crocodile heads, lying motionless in the shallows. But there was no sign of Father.

Above me, the sky was dark and clear, and the stars were not the stars of Earth, but fewer, paler, almost gray, arranged in the constellations of the dead, which are described in the Books of the Dead: the Hand, the Harp, the Jar of Forgetting, the Eye of Surat-Kemad.

Very carefully, I picked up the grave coins and put them back in my bag. I was thirsty and drank a sip from the water bottle. I could not drink river water here, for only the dead may drink of the water of the dead, and only the dead may eat the fruits of the land of the dead. That too is written in the Books of the Dead.

And so I gazed with mortal, uncovered eyes into the darkness that never ends.

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