Novice of the Afterlife by Laura Greenwood

Author:Laura Greenwood [Greenwood, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Drowlgon Press

Nine

“We can’t keep coming back here,” I whisper to Nik, though my voice is louder than I want it to be thanks to having to speak up over the protective mask I’m wearing.

“How else are we going to know if any more of the bodies have been stolen?” he asks.

I sigh. He has a point, but that doesn’t make it any safer. If we’re caught, I’m not sure they’ll let us stay at the temple. They may even turn us over to the Hall of Ma’at and blame us for this missing body and any other they can.

Which only makes standing in the middle of the body-room even more reckless.

“We’ll just check quickly. Why don’t you start with the body we know is missing?”

“Why? We already know about that one.”

“Because I want to be sure.”

I sigh, not seeing the point, but the longer we stand here talking about it, the longer we’re going to be in the room. Perhaps it’s better just to do as Nik suggests.

I make my way over to the missing body and place my hand on top. I send out my Blessed sense, expecting it to come back with no trace of a body.

Except that there is one.

“Nik…”

“What?” He looks up from the body he’s checking. He doesn’t have the same ability as I do, so it takes him longer to be certain there’s a body in there, but he can still do it.

“The body’s here.” But something feels off about it, not unlike the way a body prepared with modern embalming feels, except different at the same time too.

“Are you sure?” he asks, hurrying over.

I nod. “It feels different. Give me a second.” I remove my hand from the body in front of me and move over to the next. They’re in the same stage of mummification, so in theory they should feel the same. I know some parts of the process are likely to differ between the priests behind the actual embalming, but I want to be sure I’m not imagining things.

I place a hand on the top of the second body and send out my Blessed sense. As I expect, the resistance feels different with this one.

"You look worried,” Nik says.

I don’t answer and head back to the body that’s supposed to be missing and place my hand on top of them. It definitely feels different from the other.

“These two are definitely at the same stage of mummification, right?” I ask him.

He nods. “I checked their charts on the door when I came in.”

“They feel different.”

He frowns and squeezes gently on the arm, before going to the other one and repeating the test. “They feel the same to me.”

I shake my head. “Not to touch, they feel different to my Blessed sense.”

“Is that possible?”

“Khafre said traditional embalming feels different to modern embalming because of the materials and because of the amulets. I didn’t ask him about this particular problem though.” Nor would I. Khafre has been instrumental to my path as a member

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