Sebamose found it rather strange how the priest of Weres yelled obscenities at the death of the Nomarch. It wasn’t so much that the priest lost a human being; despite a hard life, empathy was not a foreign concept to him, he just found it annoying. No, it was the priest’s behavior that threw him off-guard. Priests, after all, were men of dignity, men who stood vigilant at every shrine and temple to serve as beacons of light—when they weren’t sneaking away little offerings that were meant for the gods themselves. That was the one thing that even a finder like Sebamose knew; it was like an un-secret secret, the one thing that cracked the façade of perfection that the priest tried so hard (or at least, pretended to try) to maintain. It was also one of the few things that made them more relatable, more human, if you thought dishonesty and hypocrisy were charming little quirks that is.
“Well, he’s dead Djed.” Sebamose replied blankly.
“I am not a fool, finder.” Djed replied irritatingly, as he reached into his bag for a scroll with which to say some prayers.
“Ervad,” Sebamose piped up, “I don’t want to interrupt your little wake here, but look at the Nomey’s ear!”
Djed looked and all he could do was get mildly annoyed. “So he has an earring, Sebamose. What is your point?”
“Doesn’t it seem weird that it’s unusually clean for something that been in the fire? The man himself is half-bathed in blood and sweat and here it is all pristine. Like it was just polished!”
“So it was barely touched. What of it?”
“No noble I’ve seen wears only one earring. I knew that he was a weird guy for doing so. Can’t you see that there’s a connection?”
“Really.” Djed simply said dismissively, as he unrolled his funerary scroll and prepare to pray.
“If you don’t believe me, then take it off him.” Sebamose replied.
“And how does this solve anything?” Djed asked.
“Well, when I was recovering the amulet a while ago—”
“You mean stealing it?”
“Fine, whatever. When I was stealing it, I ended up getting a hell of a curse thrust upon me as soon as I touched it.”
“So?”
“So I’m saying that this amulet might be cursed. Jinxed. Hexed even.”
Djed was about to dismiss him when the priest of Weres chimed in. “He could be right you know.”
“How?”
“Well,” The priest continued, “I did find it rather strange that I couldn’t heal him. These wounds here I normally could treat with ease, but for some reason I couldn’t do it. It was as if the more I staunched the wound, the more blood came out. Perhaps there is a curse.”
Djed looked at the curious little sea-shell shaped earring and contemplated its interesting place as a sudden center of attention. “I recognize that shape, now that I think about it.” He thought.
“Didn’t you say that it was weird for him to all of a sudden be traitorous to the pharaoh?” Sebamose cried, cutting into Djed’s deep thinking.
“We’ll need to get going,” Djed said, getting up, “Sebamose, I need you to come with me. We are going to the Royal Library of La-Karem.” Djed gave the priest of Weres a nod; the priest in turn motioned for nearby servants to pick up the dead man; soon, he would be taken to the mortuary wing of the local temple to Weres.
All Sebamose could do was roll his eyes at the prospect. “Great.” He thought, “Just what I need, to go to some place lined with stupid pieces of paper that I can’t seem to make sense of.”
“Coming, finder?” Djed asked as he was walking away.
The journey to the library, while uneventful, was filled with all manner of noise; from the play of children, to the occasional shouting of the generously sprinkled merchants in markets stalls. What dominated the ears of Sebamose and Djed most often however, were the shrill screams and cries of the refugees. Men and women, who tried to cling to anyone that had any semblance of riches for help. Djed felt his heart grow heavy with each new face that he encountered, all broken, misshapen, and neglected by despair; this was given more weight by the fact that the local populace was simply starting to ignore these vagrants at best, and resorting to violence at worst. Even Sebamose started to take note of increasingly unstable situation.
“How much are you willing to bet that the refugees’ll start a crime wave?” Sebamose asked, in a poor attempt to lighten the mood.
“If move fast enough we will not have to find out.” Djed simply remarked.
“Forty-five silver scarab coins says five days at most.” Sebamose continued.
“I am not interested in gambling, finder; especially when it involves the lives of mortal men.” Djed snapped.
“What? I figured that if I’m going to be dragged to a crazy clue-hunt, I might as well get some kicks out of it.” Sebamose cried.
Djed could only stop in his tracks, and give a disappointing glare at his companion. Sebamose knew that he was on thin reeds now. “I find it a wonder that you have kept your head, much less your tongue, with such reckless speech like that.” Djed finally said at last.
The two started walking some more, and soon found themselves at a high place, even higher than the Pharaonic Palace. It was said that this part of the city was its highest, and had it been big enough estate-wise, Pharaoh would have demand that the building there be razed for a bigger and better palace. But there was one thing that stood in the way of such vanity, and that was the Royal Library of La-Karem.
Sebamose took note of the low but wide circular, almost-black structure. It seemed almost alien to him that such a structure existed, despite its colored illustrations that would have been home to any monument, palace or temple; the subject matter of the illustrations, however, baffled Sebamose, as they seemed to depicted people doing things that no sorcerer or priest could ever dare to claim with magic.
“Do you make all your scroll-worm structures black? It seems so lifeless looking” Sebamose muttered.
“I am sorry that the library has such a morose effect upon you.” Djed replied, not at all remorseful, “If only we actually did build these walls out of obsidian…”
“What do you mean, you didn’t build the library?” Sebamose asked, “If your kind didn’t build it, who did?”
“Legend dictates that a race of djinn built such places. Why they have built them, none know.”
“Obviously, they built it keep scrolls, right?” Sebamose replied dismissively.
“No, we use it as a library.” Djed corrected, “When we as a people chanced upon this, it was naught but an empty chamber. We as a people gave it a new purpose.”
The two then came upon the ornate entrance of the library where men-shaped columns lined the opening, staring down any who would dare to defile the chamber within. The two columns there made the actual guards look useless in comparison, given that such guards barely rise above the knees of the obsidian titans. “For a place lined with scrolls, they choose quite a building,” Sebamose thought, admiring the towering figures.
Suddenly, he was yanked back from reality by a hard smack in the chest. “Go back to where you came from, vagrant! This is off-limits!” said the guard with a snarl.
“It is alright, warden, He is with me…” Djed Replied.
“This…Vagabond, Ervad?” The guard queried, confused.
“Did I stutter, Guard?” Djed said, “Let him through; he is with me.”
“Fine” the guard replied, “But keep him tight on a leash.”
“Lovely,” Sebamose thought, “Only a day tethered to priest, and already I’m getting quite the royal treatment.”
As he entered the round building, Sebamose saw that the inside of the complex felt much bigger than the outside. This was helped by the fact that the multiple floors that lined the walls were almost seemingly kept at bay by massive pillars of marble. Adjacent to most of these pillars were a series of statues about four or five stories stall, in various poses; some were dancing. Others were fighting or casting spells. A couple of the statues were thinking or reading. One, however looked like it was screaming, as if it were in eternal suffering.
“What’s with that statue there?” Sebamose said pointing at the screaming sculpture.
“A bit out of place, is it not?” Djed replied, with a slight smirk, “No one knows to be sure. None of the scrolls that we have so far allude to it. And the only clue we have to its origins is a plaque on his base, saying 10,000 cycles.”
“10,000 cycles?” Sebamose asked.
“Cryptic, I know. I wish that there was context with it.” Djed replied, mulling over the curious statue, “Come. Time works against us.”
Next to every pedestal and pillar were tall shelves line with scrolls and loose sheets of slightly yellowish green papyrus. Peppered like a spice throughout a noble’s dish were scribes sitting, and either copying, or cataloging various works written by long-dead men. This made navigating the narrower, less central sections of the library more difficult; a lesson Sebamose couldn’t learn fast enough. Light as his feet were, he nevertheless knocked into many of the barely ordered piles; the crack of wooden sticks upon the tiled ground and crinkling of papyrus were just as angry sounding as the cries and shouts of their masters. “Watch where you’re going, slave!” barked a scribe, obsessed with his organization.
Things seemed to quiet down when Djed climbed up one of the spiral staircases, with Sebamose tugging in from behind. The stairs were guaranteed to weed out any too short or too weak; they appeared to be built for slightly bigger beings, and so the height and stride of the steps was large. Even as fit as Sebamose was, he found himself struggling to breathe by the time that he and Djed reached the second-floor. Djed, however did not look even a little winded. “Curious,” Sebamose thought, “For a priest, he sure seems more fit than a tomb-builder. How did he manage to have the time what with his praying and reading to do?”
If the first floor depicted the large size of the building well, it was made mundane by the view from the second floor. After passing the towering shelves of scrolls, Sebamose looked over the balcony to see the first floor dwarfed by the looming overhang. Even the statues down below seem to be rather infinitesimal compared to the height of it all. Combining it with the ornate sculpture of the railings, and it was like the entire building was designed for nothing less than a divine being, something more pure than even Pharaoh himself.
“Over here, finder” Djed cried out, lost in a section of scrolls. Sebamose wandered to where Djed’s voice came from. There, he found Djed trying pour over scrolls, only to toss them aside in disgust. To see such actions nearly made Sebamose cringe; even he, a lowly finder, knew the inherent value of such pieces of parchment. It was the whole reason that the library is guarded. The exorbitant amounts of effort put into a scroll, especially one heavily decorated in art, commanded a high price. There were jobs that had Sebamose picking through heavily locked chests, just to acquire a particularly well-decorated scroll.
“What are you doing, throwing away these scrolls?” Sebamose cried out at last, “I could pay for at least four-hundred meals on one of these alone!”
“You could not,” Mentioned Djed in passing.
“What do you mean I couldn’t? I DID it!” Sebamose called out, “Fifty Gold scarabs for a mere plain copy of the book of Existrial Journeys!”
“You mean Existential Journeys?” Djed replied cooly.
“Whatever!” Sebamose shouted, flailing his arms in frustration, “The point is that you don’t just toss aside scrolls like they were used fish bones!”
“You might as well use these as napkins,” Djed replied, “They are little more than blanks. These scrolls have been tampered with. LIBRARIAN!”
Immediately, a man in a white cloth stained in ink came to answer Djed’s call. His eyes and face looked like they were staring at wall for eons, thinking about emptiness, being, the universe, or some other philosophical nonsense.
“You called, honorable Ervad?” The Librarian replied.
“Yes,” Djed spouted, chagrined, “I wish to know who was responsible for the arrangement of these scrolls.”
“Of course,” replied the librarian in a monotone as he pointed, “this way.”
The librarian led the two down a seemingly maze-like segment of the library, a segment that grew ever dimmer with each passing step. “Funny,” Sebamose thought, “things are getting darker, and now I that I think about it, where are the torches? There seems to be light here and there, but no torch, sconce or even a hole in the ceiling to let the sunlight through. Strange.”
At last they reached a rather dark corner of the library, if it was possible to have corners in a round building. But what made this most peculiar was that there seemed to be only the Librarian, Djed and Sebamose; yet the Librarian suddenly stopped, and turned around slowly.
“Here we are,” he said, at last.
Djed and Sebamose looked at each other. “What is this, some prank?” Djed barked, “Tell me where the man responsible for the blank scrolls is right now!”
“Oh, him?” Replied the Librarian, who then began to point, “He is over there!”
Right as Sebamose was turning to look, he was pounced upon by a man whose demeanor was closer to that of a savage beast than a man of any description. Either a miracle, or years’ worth of Finding experience allowed Sebamose to catch the man’s hand, whose blade was merely inches from his throat, desperate to eat its fill. Little, by little, Sebamose felt his strength sapping away; truly, the term of “monster was an apt description.” Sebamose had never felt so much power; even when he was mugged by an infamous thug nicknamed the Mountain, he never felt so easily overpowered. Here, however, he was not in a fight, or even a struggle, as it could not be so adequately named. It was merely the inevitable, being slowed by the folly of a mortal hand.
Just when Sebamose felt the shallow stinging kiss of the dagger upon his neck, there came the loud THUNK of a mace connecting to the maniac’s skull. Standing over him was a roughed up Djed, who then looked behind him. It appeared that in the fray of Sebamose’s near death, Djed had to take care of the monstrous man’s older friend, as evidenced by the battered corpse on the floor, and the marking left upon Djed during their tussle.
“Our library has been defiled,” Djed said grimly.
“What now?” Sebamose asked, dressing his wound with a piece of his clothing, only to be stopped by Djed, who uttered a word in his holy language; in an instant, Sebamose’s body healed. “We must find our information elsewhere. And I think I know where.”
“What, another library?” Sebamose guessed as he straightened himself out, “Because I’m not ready for more of this kind of hospitality!”
“No.” Djed replied, “It is probable that their scrolls are made useless as well. No, we must go where the tales are not so easily disturbed.”
“Like what? Getting rid of a few hundred scrolls isn’t exactly what you call easy, you know.”
“Tedious, yes. Difficult no. Scrolls do not have a reputation of being exactly durable.” Djed replied, “But I find that stone can resist the chisel of shadier hands for far longer.”
“So you’re saying that we need to find a temple?” Sebamose replied.
“If this is the event that I think it is, then it will not be written on the temples. Pharaohs of ages long past forbade its telling to the public, for fear of giving cults ideas.”
“That’s lovely,” Sebamose replied, “Just what I needed in a wise and powerful—”
“Be very careful of what you say next,” Djed interrupted with a piercing glare, “You barely survived your last insult to Pharaoh. And you are hardly surrounded by tolerant ears like mine.”
“Unless you know how exactly we’re going to snuff out this cult’s plan, or even what the cult’s plan even is, I think I might have a little bit of a right to lose my temperament!”
“Perhaps I should return you to Pharaoh and let him decide what to do with you.”
“Point taken.” Sebamose replied knowing that the leather band on his left hand still held him to his master.
“Good,” Djed replied, stowing his mace in his belt, “Let us go and find what we are looking for.”
“Could you please at least tell where we are going? You haven’t given me a straight answer all this time!”
“A tomb.” Djed replied simply, as he walked away, leaving Sebamose in cold shock. “He can’t be serious,” Sebamose thought, “Does he really think that that is a good idea? Robbing a tomb, just for information! Who’s gonna buy that? That’s like begging for a generous stabbing in the rear with a dull pointed stick and asking for seconds afterwards!”
“Please tell that was humor.” Sebamose cried out as they began to head out of the library after Djed.
“And now the thief decides that stealing is immoral?” Djed replied.
“First of all, I am not a ‘thief,’ I am a finder. Secondly, the last time I went to a tomb, I did it with a heavy salary waiting for me at the end of it all! Thirdly, if all this madness happening is any sign, I’ve a terrible feeling that it’s going to take more than a finder’s services to crack open this particular tomb!”
“Hm. I imagine that this tomb might have terrible magics tied to it.” Djed replied dryly.
“Exactly!”
“And that there may be a chance that one or both of us will not make it.”
“Yes” Sebamose replied slowly.
“All grim possibilities.” Djed paused for a moment, “Oh well.”
“Oh well?” cried Sebamose, “You can’t just say ‘oh well’ to all of this! What, you have a death wish? What am I saying, of course you’ve a death wish! You’re a priest! You’re obsessed with death!”
“Then I guess that the only conclusion that you can make is that if we do nothing, we shall face something worse than death!”
“Like what?” Sebamose asked as if to dare Djed into surprising him.
“Let us simply say that if I am correct, then all that you know will cease to exist.” Djed said calmly.
“If.”
“Well, unfortunately for you and your sense of peace, I am going to the tomb, and I will get what I am looking for! And you are going to follow me, because you are tethered to me.”
“Right. I’m still your slave. I forgot.”
“Again, I prefer the term, ‘indentured servant,’ thief.”
“That’s Finder Priesty-boy!” Sebamose replied irritated.
“And that’s Ervad to you!” Djed replied with equal hostility, “Remember that you are still alive because of me!”
It had been a while since Sebamose had this amount of bad luck. The last time that he could recall failing this many times, he was just starting out his Finding “career.” Even then, he managed to get out of trouble as soon as he got into it. The fact that Djed had just cornered him right then and there only salted the wound.
“Alright, Ervad,” Sebamose said at last, “lead on.”
To Read Chapter 1, Click Here
Until I get another chapter done, I must go on hiatus with this tale. I simply haven’t found exactly where I want to go with the story yet. But fret not, I shall return with other content coming soon in other areas…