Bless the Child (42 page)

“All will be fair in the end, my prince,” she answered, shocked by his question. “Poor in one life, wealthy in another . . . king and slave, and all in between. When we have lived enough lives so that we have found our way back to God, we will see that all was fair.”

Karaden propped himself up on an elbow, concentration etched on his brow. “But
why,
dear Mim, should they require of us this hard journey? Why must we be separated out from them in the first place, thrust from Paradise, left to wander life after life, struggling to learn what we once knew? Did you ever wonder if it could be merely a sadistic game for them to watch our struggles?”

“You are looking into a dark whirlpool, Karaden. There are things we cannot,
must
not know.”

“But I
wish
to know, Mim! I will be Pharaoh, and I will be priest/hierophant and if it is possible for me to know, I will find out.”

“You dare the Gods when you speak thus, Karaden,” she said uneasily.

“No,” he answered with great seriousness. “I merely challenge them to answer me. It is a fair question.”

“Perhaps, because you are a king—”

“No!” he said quickly. “Because I am a man.”

Karaden spoke of kingship, and Mim of prophecy, and they shared their secret fears . . . but, when they parted each night, Mim would hurry to her cell, ecstatic and afraid. She would kneel before the Goddess and pour forth her wonder and confusion.
What shall I do? O Great Queen of Heaven,
she pleaded.
I never meant for this to be!
She begged for guidance as was her custom, but the Goddess did not answer.

The days and nights became her torment and her exaltation; there was new meaning in every breath. Mim prayed to the Goddess to understand and guide her; Karaden, too, was a God, and she felt herself no match for either of them. Her mind betrayed her, for she could force no thought into its confines, but thought of him. Her soul betrayed her, for she saw this not as sin, but as the sweetest expression of the Goddess energy she had been honed to channel.

“Did not you love Osiris beyond all else in the Universe?”
she cried out in her prayers.
“Did you not move Heaven and Earth by the power of your love for him?”
But the Goddess was mute within her and made no reply.

As
the days wore on, Mim and Karaden bathed in the splendor of their growing love. They told each other nothing could come between them. Other priestess-designates had been freed from their vow of celibacy . . . other pharaohs had made their own choice of queen, in lieu of the court-planned alliance.

In her innocence, Mim thought their love as inevitable as the rising of the sun, or the phases of the moon. They were heart-friends, and in the great spiral dance of life, they knew each other’s steps.

Karaden told her she was to be his queen, and was so certain they could marry that she almost believed. He was the earthly incarnation of a God, he reminded her; he could bargain with a Goddess, without desperate consequences.

“I will petition my father,” he said, “and he will speak with the High Priestess. There have been priest and priestess on the throne of Khemu before. You have not taken your final vow of celibacy . . . the priestess will understand that you can serve your Goddess and the people best as my queen.”

And, so she hoped with all her heart that the Goddess would relent. But, Karaden’s petition was denied.

Kareden
sent for Mim, and she found him pacing like a caged beast. His anger radiated, crackling from his clenched fists, as if he clutched a lightning bolt. She had never before seen his fury.

“Pharaoh has
spoken!”
Karaden said mockingly. She had never heard him other than respectful to his father and was troubled at the force of his anger. “We are admonished never to see each other again! I will face the Abyss
immediately
I am told—if I survive, my training will be deemed complete, and I will never return here, except on state occasions.”

Mim stood, turned to stone, all hope extinguished in a breath. All life stretched out before her like the desert sands, barren and infinite; if hearts could break, hers did, in that instant. The pain would remain within her, when five thousand years had run the hourglass.

Karaden strode to Mim, and clasped her by the arms, forcing her tearful eyes to his. “I have thought about nothing but this, through the night, beloved,” he said urgently. “We may yet prevail, but the road ahead is fraught with danger. You must hear my plan.”

Mim nodded, too numb to wonder at his fierceness. Only a king could think to challenge both a pharaoh and a Goddess.

“If you are not a virgin they cannot consecrate you as they plan.” She looked up, stricken to the soul—could he be suggesting that they steal from the Goddess?

“But, I have been
promised!”

“But, not by
you,
beloved!” he said hurriedly. “Don’t you see? Your parents dedicated you without your consent. You have the right to protest.” He straightened, but kept her eyes riveted to his own. “As I have the right to refuse my father’s choice of bride.”

Karaden reached for Mim and clasped her in a wild embrace. He kissed her with all the pent-up passion of their long denial, holding, touching, probing. And she was inflamed with a lust beyond anything she had ever imagined. She
wanted
him. Desire raged in her, heightened by the desperate fear of loss. His hands caressed her breasts, her face, her very soul. She was mad with love, and in that moment might have let him have his way . . . but he drew back, flushed, struggling for control. “Not here,” he said. “Tonight, beyond the temple, through the labyrinth. I will send my servant, Zeb, for you. He will lead you to me. Then we will make an offering of our love to both our Gods, and ask their blessing on it.”

“But the Goddess will be angry . . .”

Karaden stood back and faced her, the power of his divine lineage apparent in his aspect. “I am of Pharaoh’s seed,” he said. “I, too, am sprung of Gods, and Ra is Greater than the Goddess. He will prevail.”

“But I am
mortal,
Karaden!” Mim pleaded, terrified by what he suggested. “What will become of
me,
if Gods do battle for our souls?”

He did not answer her, for in love and confidence he would not see clearly. But, Mim was suddenly in the grip of vision and saw a momentary flash of truth:
When Gods do battle over mortals, only the Gods prevail.

There was a kind of madness upon her when she left him. She told Meri-Neyt she was ill, and must be left alone in her chamber, and Meri, knowing full well the cause of her illness, begged her to beware. But Mim was driven by the blindness of her love.

Beneath the temple city was a labyrinth of catacombs. Other temples had been built upon this site in ancient times, for Saqqara was a holy place on the energy grid of the Earth Mother, and sacred to her flame. The old ruins had always attracted the girl; she had felt
power
in this strange cavernous world below the temples, that was more comforting than anywhere else. Perhaps, it was the energy of the Earth Mother that pulsed from the ancient rock and sand, perhaps it was the inconceivable quiet that made her feel she had entered the silence of the Gods.

Mim hastened to this secret place of solace; her sorrow, fear, and confusion could be dealt with there. She wandered, mindlessly, through the ancient haunts of long-dead priestesses, and held strange, desperate conversations in her head, not knowing where she put her feet.

Perhaps, some unseen hand guided her way, for after a length of time that had no meaning to her, she found herself in a place she had not been before. A vast round chamber had been hewn from the primordial basalt and sandstone; twelve great arches made by man or nature formed a sanctuary.

Wonderingly, Mim approached the nearest arch; an incandescent glow was emanating from the interior. Unworldly, it was . . . as different from the light above, as the music of the celestial spheres would be from that of an earthly harpist.

She was drawn inexorably to the glow.

There, upon an altar cut from the largest crystal she had ever encountered, stood the Isis Amulet. But not as she had seen it in her father’s house.

The Goddess energy pulsed within now. Radiant, breathtaking, powerful, beyond mere mortal’s capacity to contemplate . . .it had been consecrated by the Great Mother Herself. Awe filled the young priestess, for in that moment she knew that she blundered into the Holy of Holies.
This chamber was Her Womb.

It was a sign. Surely the Goddess herself had led her here to this treasure, that Karaden and she might solve their terrible dilemma. Mim-Atet-ra knelt and gave thanks that her prayer had been answered. It all seemed so clear to her, then . . . later, she wondered if she had gone mad for love. She touched the magic Amulet.

In that awesome instant, the power of the Goddess was drawn down through her as if she were a lightning rod! In that flash of unutterable power, she
understood
the mastery of priesthood. The Goddess energy swirled through her, electrifying every cell with brilliant light. She felt her pelvis expand into infinity to
become
the Cauldron of the Mother. She was the essence of femaleness! Whirled out beyond her finite limits, she could
see
the eternal matrix—the blueprint for humanity itself. The male and female components of life revealed, with all their eternal vulnerability. She could see that while men felt they had strength in their pelvis, in fact it was their weakest part, for it led them into folly and wasted time. But to the female it was the Divine Center—the core of a strength so powerful it kept the world alive, for women are the cauldron from which life generates.

She was entranced . . . drunk with a power she was not yet schooled to channel.

Mim did a desperate thing. The kind of act that ever after seems inconceivable.

She took the Amulet from the altar. No one was near; no one would miss it for a few hours. Had not the Mother led her here to help her in her need? She would take it to Karaden. They would pray together to the Great Mother for deliverance, and she would see the purity of their love and hear their prayer.

Mim returned to her room to rest for a few hours before her scheduled rendezvous with Karaden, the Isis Amulet tucked inside her tunic, so near her heart. She drifted to sleep.

And this is what she saw:

In a dream/vision the Goddess Isis came. She was robed in glory beyond what mortals ever know . . . She rode the crescent moon and the greatest stars of the firmament illuminated her crown. She was wondrous and fierce, in the way of Immortals, and her voice was mightier than all the trumpets of the earth.

“Priestess, daughter, arise and hear me!” she demanded, and Mim felt her astral self lift from the boundaries of the physical body on the bed, held to it only by the silver etheric cord that nourishes the Ka.