Bless the Child (31 page)

“Isis is the High Priestess who represents the Inner and most often ‘hidden’ Sanctum Sanctorum. She is lunar, yet receives her power from the sun, and she is the Spiritual Bride of the Just Man. She symbolizes all intellectual, psychic, and spiritual gifts, and she is the keeper of all cosmic secrets . . . Only the pure in heart may ever come to know them, for she conceals them from the profane.

“She is a High Initiate and sits with her left foot resting upon the crescent moon, symbolizing the feminine principle, which demonstrates her mastery over the lunar-emotional aspects of her nature. In the arcane sciences, the feminine intuitive qualities of the mind are honored more highly than the materialized masculine will-to-power.

“We humans owe her a great deal. It was Isis who ordained that elders would be beloved by children, and that justice would be more powerful than gold and silver. She caused men to love women, and caused truth to be considered beautiful.

“Every part of her story is an encoded mystery, which represents the judgment of the soul by the Lords of Karma. In the Egyptian Mysteries, if the soul was found to be utterly pure, it was allowed to pass onward into immortality; if it had not
‘true voice,’
it was delivered over to the monster Amemit, ‘the devourer, and was swallowed up again in the cycle of regeneration to be reborn on earth in another body.”

“I think I need another drink before we move on to Sekhmet,” Amanda said wryly. “These ancients play rough.” She replenished everyone’s glass, including her own, and sat back down.

“Ellie,” Peter said, “why don’t you tell us what you know of Sekhmet.”

She nodded and stood up, as Peter sat down. Ellie paused a moment to gather herself, then in her ceremonial voice cried out,

“‘I am the Mighty One,

who rules the Wastelands . . .

Great and Terrible is my Name.’

“Thus does Sekhmet call herself.

‘Greater than Isis am I,

and mightier than all the Gods

Forbidden is my Name.’

“And that’s only a tiny part of her curriculum vitae,” she said, with a grin, returning to her normal voice. “She’s quite a girl. Her name is taken from the root ‘sekhem,’ which means ‘strong,’ ‘mighty,’ ‘violent.’ She tends to appear to devotees in the form of a magnificent leopard-sized black cat, wearing a golden collar studded with rubies, and carrying an Ankh-headed ceremonial staff. A massive disc and uraeus crowns her head, and she is nothing, if not regal. With good reason, of course, as Ra, the Sun God, was her father. She was his wild child.” Ellie caught Peter’s suppressed smile and returned it.

“It’s important to note that she isn’t all bad, exactly . . . Sekhmet is a destroyer, but destruction is often necessary to make way for a new order. She represents primordial chaos, and she has a definite blood lust, but there are those who would say that without an energy of destructiveness, there would exist only stasis in the world, and nothing could ever improve.”

“A fine distinction,” quipped Amanda, “but you can only make it if she’s not busy destroying you, at the time.”

Ellie laughed. “There’s the rub. According to her allegorical legend, because she was ‘the force against which no other force avails,’ Ra once asked her to punish some earthlings who had earned his wrath. She hotfooted it down here, destroyed the perps, as Dev would say, rending and slaughtering, and drinking their blood willy-nilly. She got such a kick out of what she was doing, that she threatened to destroy the whole human race.

“So in desperation, Ra snapped up some plants said to be of the solanaceae family, plus a little opium, and sent it off to the God Sekti at Heliopolis, who quickly brewed them up into seven thousand jugsful of a drink made from human blood and beer. Sekhmet spotted the brew, thought it looked yummy, lapped up the seven thousand jugs and quote, ‘Her heart was filled with joy.’ She also fell into a deep stupor, and when she woke up, forgot to kill the rest of humanity.”

“A veritable paean to intoxication!” said Amanda with a laugh. “What a great story.”

“And well told,” Peter said admiringly. “I can see that most of the Egyptian scholars I know might do well to discuss their deities with you, Ellie.”

“That’s kind of you, Peter. And you’ve just reminded me that there is one other scholarly thought to add in here. Gerald Massey, who was a nineteenth-century scholar and trance-medium, identified Sekhmet as the Great Harlot from the Book of Revelation, ‘The Mother of Harlots and of abominations of the earth,’ I think it reads. So, even though she also has good manifestations, as well as evil ones, Sekhmet is highly unreliable when it comes to humankind. Like the Druid Goddess Morrigan, she might ultimately do good for us, but it will be by means of pain and destruction.”

“All very entertaining,” Devlin said as he bade Maggie good night a short while later, “but not likely to get Cody back.”

“He who closeth his mind, closeth the door to the future,” Ellie chided, overhearing.

“I suppose some ancient Egyptian sage said that?” Devlin asked.

Ellie grinned broadly. “Nope,” she replied, “I said it.”

A
bdul Hazred made obeisance to the altar and prepared to disperse the sacred energies. It was essential that all powers invoked or evoked be dispatched to their normal spheres before ending any ceremony. More than one celebrant had died mad, as a result of inadequate banishing.

Hazred rendered thanks to all the Intelligences that had been kind enough to aid him in that day’s magical working. The heady fragrance of the sandalwood incense, one of the few acceptable to all the Gods, filled the room around him, and he felt the energies drain and dissipate, wafting away in the scented smoke.

He retreated down the steps, still facing the altar—it was never safe to turn your back on an Immortal—and returned to the study he used as his robbing room.

Hazred removed the heavy lion mask with relief, undid the apron of Sekhmet, and pulled the white robes off, over his head. For a moment he stood, head thrown back, arms outstretched, breathing deeply. It took time to come down from the performance of ritual magic; once you opened your aura to the God/Goddess energies, you were helpless in their grasp. There was nothing as stupendous as the power that surged through you, electrifying, exhilarating, making you
more
than human . . . but it was not your power, it was theirs. Only a fool allowed himself to forget that fact, and fools didn’t live long in the practice of magic.

He’d followed a long and winding road in the wake of the Goddess. Had there ever been a time in this life when he hadn’t known his destiny as her servant? The Universe had provided the intellect, the wealth, the family prominence, the ambition . . . but he, himself, had been called upon to supply the back-breaking work, the years of study, the infinite varieties of personal sacrifice that would make him worthy of such a Divine Mistress. Finally, she would reward his diligence by placing the greatest piece of all in his hands.

Hazred returned to normal posture; he was fully reconnected to the real world, now . . . fully ensconced in his mortal body, fully in charge of himself, once again. He showered briskly, scrubbing himself, as carefully as had the priests of old, who always purified their bodies, before and after ritual. He left the shower and splashed his face and body with fragrant oils. Patchouli for sexuality, jasmine for good fortune, moonflower for intuition, and a few others that were his special secret.

He thought about the woman. Maggie O’Connor. These Anglo names were so lacking in finesse, so grimly unattractive. But she was not an unattractive woman. In fact, that had been a most pleasant surprise when they’d met. He’d given a great deal of thought to how to win her confidence; had she been ugly, several of those possibilities would have had to be eliminated. As it was . . .

Eric thought she was unimportant, but in the final disposition of the matter, Hazred knew he was wrong. No piece could be construed unimportant, in a chess board set up by the deities. Whether she would prove to
know
something, or to
do
something, or to simply set some energy in motion, he did not know. That she bore watching was unequivocal.

Hazred dressed hurriedly, feeling refreshed, and drove to the pace where the agent of the Egyptian government would be waiting. He was beyond politics, but he respected power, especially where it could be useful.

The old book shop on West Fourth Street looked shabby, as if time had already passed it by fifty years ago. A few college kids in jeans or chinos circulated among the dusty stacks; middle-aged scholarly types, pasty-faced from infrequent sunlight, spoke in library-hush to the elderly clerks, who seemed nearly as inanimate as the out-of-print books.

Hazred fingered two or three volumes as if interested, and asked a question of the man behind a heavily laden oak desk. Wordlessly, he was waved toward the remote back corner of the cavernous shop. Hazred glanced right, then left, and satisfied he was unobserved except by those trained to do so, he rounded the last stack, slipped through the door marked STORE PERSONNEL ONLY, and mounted the dark staircase.

ANUBIS IMPORTING, LTD. Was painted on the door in ornate lettering. Hazred knocked and waited to be buzzed in. Beyond the door and small reception area, a large modern office existed, startlingly at odds with all that preceded it. Sleek metal office furniture, computer consoles, and an elaborate telephone system said that Anubis Importing was other than what it seemed. In fact, it was the New York headquarters of a special section of the Egyptian intelligence service, Mohabarat.

Hazred was ushered into the inner office; he greeted the man behind the desk with a restrained cordiality that was responded to in much the same tone. Hazred understood the military mind of the Secret Service colonel—he just didn’t like it much. Empower a civil servant, he had always felt, and you breed a potential tyrant.

“You’ve made contact with the woman,” the man said, as his opening gambit. “What have you learned?”

“She is intelligent, and educated, but quite out of her depth. She seeks only the child’s welfare and, as far as I could tell, has no interest in the Amulets, as she gives no credence to the legend.”

The man raised a dark heavy eyebrow skeptically. “I have known few humans who were truly
dis
interested in power,” he said.

The man’s supercilious tone wasn’t lost on Hazred. “And have you known may grandmothers who would trade a child’s life for this power?” Hazred replied evenly. “You must move in interesting circles.”

The face of the man behind the desk darkened. He had been handed this arrogant academic as a given, in the matter of the Amulets, but he neither liked nor trusted him. He himself placed no credence in the ridiculous legend—he had been in the military far too long to have any illusions about what real power consisted of, and who wielded it. But he could see the PR value of such nonsense, among the ignorant masses. And he had orders that were to be carried out. So he would tolerate this dandified know-it-all; at least until he became an intolerable nuisance. Once his superiors had made the decision about what to do with the child and the woman, Abdul Hazred would become as expendable as he deserved to be. The thought cheered Colonel Hamid enough to become cordial again.

“I have not yet received orders regarding the disposition of the child and her guardian, Mr. Hazred. You are simply to continue your conversations, and to let us know if anything unusual develops. And, of course, you are to let us know when you calculate the precise date of the alleged ritual.”

Hazred smiled reassurance. “These matters are complex, Colonel. You must understand that the ancients took elaborate pains with secrecy concerning the Great Mysteries. You may rest assured you will hear from me the moment I am certain of my data.”

They said their good-byes, each knowing the other had lied. That was to be expected, of course. Only fools tipped their hands.

Hazred returned to the street, grateful to leave these bureaucrats and their petty pretensions behind. He had far bigger fish to fry.

Lifetimes,
he thought, as he rounded the corner and flagged a taxi.
I have spent lifetimes in preparation for this moment, and this imbecile, thinks I am on his payroll.

He would never have consented to the governments request that he advise on this matter, except for the fact that these military morons could be useful. After the run-in with Eric, it seemed likely that temporal force could prove necessary. If so, Colonel Hamid and his storm-troopers would be called into play.

Hazred cultivated Vannier and Sayles through his knowledge of magic; he’d been above their suspicion, as only a handful of humans had Crossed the Abyss and no one could purport to have done so, unless it was true. And of all the Thirteen Adepts who would serve the Materialization, only he and Eric were of the proper bloodline.

Hazred paid the cabbie and stood for a moment on the corner of Park and Seventy-third Street; his plans would have been better served if he’d been able to get to the child through Maggie O’Connor, but he would win in the end, anyway. And that fool of a colonel would help him do so.