Fatebreaker

Chapter 2: Dedi

In an unlit, silver-clad and marble-featured room, a woman sat before a window and stared into the fading night. Nearing dawn separated the woman's dark skin from the darker shadows surrounding her. The naked dome of her head melded with polished vases ornamenting her chamber, giving her an ephemeral presence. Her large, deep-set almond eyes glittered like the fading stars.

Fear flickered through her as she gazed upon the vista. In her animal depths, her Godly heights, and every confused part of her being, she knew she was not prepared to meet its vastness. It was a colossal world, into which she was about to be thrust. 

Cast into exile, never to return home. The deadly words from the messenger cut into her windpipe. 

The man stood behind her, in the twilight netherworld of the room, the whites of his eyes bulging. Other messengers had been killed for relaying less distasteful missives. Not on the woman's orders directly, but with the understanding that the death would please her. The messenger's clasped hands were shaking into one another.

Instead, the Gods smiled on him. The woman waved his dismissal, wanting him gone, and memory of his message. His bare feet sprinted away into the dull silence.

Seeking distraction, the woman looked towards the north – toward a tower reassuringly breaking the grey. The Pharaoh's lighthouse, standing sentinel on the isthmus that sheltered the Great Harbour of Alexandria. Its fiery windows formed a many-eyed giant, winking benevolent signals to a constellation of fishing barks and pleasure barges, war galleys and trading cogs stretched across the River and the Great Ocean.

The giant sent messages of comfort to watermen as they performed their solitary work. The woman imagined it sent the same to her. Yet the giant's silent gold threads were failing before her eyes, molten warmth robbed, dulled, dissolved, by creeping grey. The rise of Re was imminent. The Light Giver was unfolding like a spider on the eastern horizon, barely falling short of the land, which slept on, embraced by the cold desert breeze.

The breeze rippled an ancient acacia tree that had spread its branches, generation after generation, over the harem wall beneath the chamber window. The leaves whispered in the dark, adding texture to the silence.

The woman's bare feet were tapping on the tiles, mimicking the pulse of the foliage. With an effort of will she recalled and stilled herself, fighting against deadening layers of tiredness. Her body was still acclimatised to the sleep in which she had been enmeshed, seemingly moments before, when the servants had awakened her into this nightmare. The urge to curl into safe warm obscurity was overwhelming. However, she forced her eyes to remain open and fixed, her posture erect, hands laid on the lion-paw armrests of her ebony chair. She would not disgrace herself. If she could simply control her body, then the world would follow her example.

A disembodied voice, heavy as a drum-echo, reached to her from the shadows.

"In the Beginning," the voice said, "floodwaters engulfed the world. There was nothing but water. Water, and a perfect, endless dark."

The woman focussed on the baritone.

"One eternity passed. And then another. There was perfect stillness across the unmade world. Until. Finally – slowly – something broke the water's infinite surface. A shape rose in the dark. Intricate petals, arranged around a perfect stem, a flawless shape: a lotus blossom, unfurling from the depths." A dry cough punctuated the voice. "The flower stood up straight, confident in its foundations. The lotus had grown from the Void, its roots sunk in eternity."

The hard lines of the woman's face – framing her wide, curved mouth – softened as the voice talked, her ba slipping into the unfolding story, her mind evaporating from the present; as the speaker intended, understanding her, seeking to calm her. The storyteller knew there was nothing to be done but wait. Wait, and hope the orders from the palace were wrong.