A/N: This is an AU, though it loosely follows canon events. Since this story is from the perspective of Malik's father, who is unnamed, I gave him the name "Ramman", which is an alternative name for Adad, the Babylonian god of storms. ('A dad', get it? XD) Considering that "Ishtar" is a Babylonian deity, I didn't think it's be too out of place.
There are other side characters mentioned; they all have Arabic names that were chosen rather arbitrarily.
That said, enjoy!
Where She Lies
She wasn't much.
"A son," she said, folding her hands over her stomach. The room was dark except for the candle at the table, and the flickering light accentuated every hollow in her skin until she was nothing but an emaciated form hidden in oversized robes.
Ramman Ishtar let his eyes travel over his wife's gaunt wrists to the belly bulging beneath them. Her second pregnancy had taken an unprecedented toll on her body, and he wouldn't trust her words so easily.
"Be careful," was all he said. "I don't want to hear promises you can't keep."
Her face was wreathed in darkness, but her eyes shone. "I have kept this promise."
"So you say."
Ramman turned away from her and back down at the scroll laid out on the table. They'd both been restless sleepers, these past few months, and he'd taken to studying the scriptures late at night, when the rest of the clan was asleep and couldn't distract him with their petty requests. But even then he was plagued by interruptions like this. Even the steady echo of his wife's footsteps might as well be tolling bells. You couldn't hide when you're surrounded by stone walls.
Her footsteps faded. Hopefully she'd gone back to bed. He'd been generous with her in these past few months, doing everything in his power to ensure that this child would be born alive, and male. Judging by her current condition, he wouldn't get another opportunity to father a child by her. If that was the case, he'd have to wait for one of his sister's children to reach childbearing age.
Time passed. The candle burned low.
There were always the acolytes, he mused, rolling up the scroll. Their clan had grown smaller and smaller over the years, and while they were also technically of Ishtar blood, their blood was impure. Mixed. Still, it would be better than the alternative; naming Rishid as his heir.
Sons by adoption are still sons, his wife had said. He's willing.
Not my son, he had replied. Not my blood. If he was ever desperate enough to break tradition, he'd initiate Ishizu. At least she was an Ishtar.
But he had nothing to worry about. This child, whatever it was, was a son. He might be tested by the gods, but they would never fail him. Hadn't he fulfilled his duty to them his entire life, and sacrificed everything for their sake?
He turned toward the end of the table and gazed at the two relics his clan had been charged with protecting. The Millennium Items.
He didn't touch them. He felt no need to master the Items: protecting them was enough. The task of preserving the Pharaoh's memories was the most sacred duty a man could ask for, and Ramman had no qualms about taking the necessary precautions to ensure that those memories stayed hidden.
The hurried patter of footsteps. Ramman looked up. His niece, Hazar, appeared in the doorway.
She flushed and bowed awkwardly, panting for breath. "It's your wife, sayyid. The baby—"
For a moment Ramman finds himself paralyzed by inaction, and then he mastered his fear and barged toward his niece. A miscarriage was impossible, not so suddenly. Not now.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong—"
"Then why—?"
"It's over. You have a son."
The world stopped as he reveled in Hazar's words. A son. He had a son. Then he heard the rest of what she had said. His wife couldn't have given birth so quickly. Just how long had he been reading?
"Show me."
She brought him to the opposite end of the commune, where his sister's family lived. Maizah greeted him in the doorway of her family's chambers, her expression grim as she wiped bloody hands on a rag already stained dark.
"It's not good," she said. "The—"
"Is there a child?"
She paused mid-sentence, her expression suddenly wary. "A son, but—"
"Where?"
Maizah nodded into the room just beyond, and he pushed past her to find his wife lying on a bed in the center of the room. Ishizu and Rishid were there, too—somehow they had found out about this before Ramman had—but he only had eyes for the small bundle lying in his wife's arms. A boy, yes. A boy with white hair.
The children looked up at him and froze, the whole room falling quiet as he took in the scene. Something, the unnatural stillness of the air, the pallor of his wife's skin or the unexpected color of the boy's hair, gave him pause, and he could have sworn that they were both dead, that the child had been stillborn after all. Then his wife sighs and the child's mouth opened in a toothless gape, his eyes shining the same violet hue of Ramman's own eyes, and it screamed.
Ramman locked eyes with his wife, a split second of understanding taking place between them. Then he took the child in his arms and left her to to her fate. He had seen the black streaks of blood on the stone beneath her, the pile of rags in the corner, the satisfaction in her eyes. There was no martial affection lost between them. She had fulfilled her only duty toward him, and the best way he could recognize her sacrifice was to let her have her last moments alive with her other children.
She was welcome to them, Ramman decided, admiring the pale tint of his son's hair. This boy would be a king among men: a malik, and his mother would be buried in a place of honor. This one success more than made up for her past failures.
From the very beginning, Ramman tried to instill in Malik a deep love of the scriptures. He kept a careful eye on the boy's development, spending every possible moment ensuring that Malik would be the leader the tombkeepers needed.
For the most part, Malik fulfilled Ramman's expectations beautifully. Even as a child, he was incredibly bright, and took to his studies with an intensity that Ramman admired. But, as he slowly realized, Malik wasn't flawless. He was too sentimental; he cried at the slightest sign of anger and didn't seem to understand the concept of pure blood.
Ramman supposed it was unavoidable. Malik was only half his, after all, and he had his mother's temperament. Ramman should have realized this and kept Rishid away from Malik. Instead he had seen fit to charge the outsider with Malik's well-being, and Malik was starting to treat Rishid like a brother instead of the servant Ramman meant him to be.
He attempted to correct the situation by being stricter with his son, but his efforts had the opposite effect. One day, when Malik made a mistake in his recitations and began to cry, Ramman lost his temper. The boy was still young, and mistakes were still tolerable at this point, but he'd had enough of the constant crying. As he shouted, Malik shrunk, turning half away to hide his face, covering his wailing mouth with small hands, and his voice sounded so like her voice trailing out from between his fingers, high and plaintive, that Ramman stopped mid-sentence, certain that he was hearing his wife's voice, but no, it was just his son, rubbing his eyes and frowning fiercely up at him, determined to recite again, and do it correctly.
He was more wary about how he treated Malik after that. But still there were times, in the middle of the night, when he heard the unmistakable pattern of Ishizu's footfalls in the corridor as she checked on her brother just one more time, that he knew that they were coddling Malik, all of them. There was no room for grace in the Ishtar clan, especially for Malik, who needed to learn that a single mistake could mean the death of their entire way of life.
So when his son started to suffer from bad dreams, Ramman forbade him from sleeping anywhere but in his own room. He told Malik that the twisting shadows he claimed to see were only the result of fear and candlelight, that the infrequent squeal of stone against stone was only the natural result of time, and that the strange humming sound he heard late, late, at night was only a ringing in his ears, and nothing more.
The nights were indistinguishable from the day, under the sand, and Ramman made sure that Malik knew this. Darkness didn't matter. Learning the scriptures mattered, and growing, and honoring the sacred nature of their duties. Those were the things that mattered.
"But we don't guard the Pharaoh's tomb," Malik observed after one of Ramman's many lectures. "So why do we live here?"
"We do guard the Pharaoh's tomb," Ramman corrected. "You know that. When you're old enough, I'll take you to the burial chamber and show you. This is where the Pharaoh gave us our mandate, and this is the resting place of the Millennium Items. Protecting our heritage is most important. You must remember that."
"I do," Malik said, and Ramman was afforded only a moment of pride. Then Malik continued.
"But the Pharaoh isn't here," he said. "He's gone."
"What?" Ramman was caught off-guard by Malik's tone of confidence. Perhaps he didn't quite understand the concept of death and resurrection. "Who told you that?"
"You said we have to remember what he did."
"Yes, he saved-"
"We remembered and he forgot about us."
"Malik!"
And then Malik shook his head. With a troubled expression, he looked up at his father. "The Pharaoh will come back one day, right, Father?"
"Yes," Ramman said, taking in, as if for the first time, the unnaturally light color of his son's hair. "He will."
Something about their conversation troubled him, and the next day he took a torch and ventured into the part of the catacombs that the tomb-keepers rarely used anymore. There was too much danger involved in visiting the Pharaoh's chamber; the inner catacombs hadn't been ventilated like the outer ones had and were littered with traps. The surrounding labyrinth was extensive, and many parts of it hadn't been explored in years, mostly because it contained nothing but old corpses and even older records that weren't good for anyone but a committed genealogist. When the Ishtars had been an extensive family, this kind of record-keeping was necessary, but these days Ramman could keep the bloodlines memorized without frequent trips into the dark.
But Malik's words has struck a chord of fear in Ramman's heart, and he had lain awake all night trying to remember if he had ever actually seen the Pharaoh's body.
It was a silly worry; there was no possible way the Pharaoh could have been taken out of the tomb without the Ishtars knowing, but the coming of day hadn't relieved Ramman's overwhelming dread, and he'd had no choice but to go the chamber and make sure for himself.
Without intending to, he found himself in the center of the labyrinth instead of in the royal chambers. He must have been so deep in thought that he'd turned himself around. He looked around briefly, got his bearings, and started out again with clearer focus.
But as he walked, the light seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, and his vision grew fuzzier and fuzzier as the stones slowly became more and more impossible to differentiate. Blinking furiously, he continued onward, but the twists and turns that he'd been so confident of navigating all looked unrecognizable.
I haven't gone that far, he thought. The corridor he was looking for had partially collapsed; the ruins that were left should have been easy to find.
Still he found his progress impossible to measure, and when he somehow found himself back at the entrance of the labyrinth instead of the royal chamber he was aiming for, he swore violently and forged forward once more, walking quickly, keeping his eyes on the hieroglyphs in the walls. They told a story, he knew. You just had to know the order of events and then you'd find yourself there in no time.
The text was about the destruction of Apep, the demon of darkness, and Ramman murmured the words from memory as he walked, looking for the next line of text as he finished each line: "Your head is crushed: your bones are broken and your flesh cut into pieces. Ra has condemned you to the earth, O Enemy of Ra—"
He stopped, and heard something that wasn't his own voice: a small crumbling sound not unlike the steady stream of sand. He turned toward the source, sure that that must be where the ruined corridor was, and found himself facing a wall. These damned echoes must be playing games with his mind.
He continued on, sure that he was growing close, but no matter which turn he took, the sound stayed buried in his ear at a constant pitch, never growing louder or quieter or changing direction, until finally Ramman gave up. He'd never had this kind of trouble navigating the tombs before. But it didn't matter—as he searched, he'd grown more and more sure that his worries were unfounded. He'd have to come here again eventually, but he'd remember to bring someone with a more thorough knowledge of the catacombs. Perhaps Ishizu. He knew she'd made several trips into the labyrinth, usually in search of historical records. She had a strange fascination with documenting their history that he didn't understand, but didn't entirely mind either.
He was still standing in the center of the labyrinth when he heard a faint scream echoing out of the corridors, the voice sounding distinctly familiar. Malik's. Heart sinking, Ramman ran toward the exit of the labyrinth. The way out was far easier to find than the way in, and he arrived at the exit almost instantly. He extinguished his torch and hurried to their living quarters, which he found abandoned. He wandered the catacombs for several minutes, growing more and more agitated, and when he finally stumbled across Rishid, carrying Malik in his arms.
Malik was unnaturally still, his lips twisted down in a grimace of pain Ramman hadn't seen on his face ever before. Rishid, on the other hand, looked frantic, and gladly turned toward Ramman where he might normally keep his distance.
Ramman took Malik into his own arms. "What's happened here?"
"There was a snake—" Rishid's voice was incongruent with his expression, dull and clipped as he turned to stare down the corridor. As he spoke, Malik's arms wrapped around Ramman's neck as he buried his face in his father's shoulder. "I killed it, but—"
Ramman noticed for the first time the blood on Malik's ankle, the rapid swelling, and felt his anger bubble up inside him as he tightened his grip on his son to prevent himself from striking Rishid. "But what?" he said curtly. "You still failed in your only duty here."
Rishid took a step back, a mask of wariness settling over his features, but then he glanced down the corridor, says it a hushed murmur. "I am truly sorry, sayyid. But the snake—"
"What about it?"
"It's gone." Rishid spoke quickly, fearfully, aware that he was tempting Ramman's already short temper. "The body—I can't find it."
Ramman took a second look at the corridor; it was absent of any creatures. "Clearly you can't even manage that," he said bitterly. "Fetch Maizah. Then I will have words with you."
Rishid was gone almost instantly, and Ramman took a second look around the corridor. No snake. Not even a sign of blood. Ridiculous. Not only had Rishid been careless enough to get Malik hurt, but he'd made up a story to take the blame away from himself. Ramman had tolerated his presence in their clan so far, but a failure like this was inexcusable. It seemed Rishid still needed some lessons about his place in the Ishtar family.
The sound of Rishid's footsteps faded, and behind the sound of the flickering torches and Malik's labored breathing, Ramman could still make out the faint hum of falling sand.
Must be his old age, he thought to himself, and he turned to take Malik to his room, leaving the empty corridor behind him.
She appeared before him in his sleep, naked, her skin slick with sweat and moonlight. Black streaks of blood still stained her thighs as she stepped across the room, her eyes wide and white (the same way they were the night Marik was conceived and she said the same thing she did then, voice wavering like the curling edges of burning paper).
I can give you a son.
He didn't move, because this was a dream, it must be a dream, and then he wondered if it might be a vision, a warning from the gods and the afterworld, and without consciously deciding to, he curled his fingers in the coarse sheets and replied the same way he had back then.
"Then prove it."
She leaned forward, the luminescence of her skin casting moving patterns of light on the walls, and the strange murmur in Ramman's ears intensified. She reached the end of the bed and stopped.
Do you wish to revive the Ishtar line?
"But we have. Malik is—"
Malik is not a full Ishtar.
Slowly, Ramman sat up.
The insistent hum seemed to grow louder, diversified into millions of individual sounds, and Ramman couldn't help imagining a swarm of insects on the other side of the stones, ramming against the walls, again and again and again, trying to get in. His wife only smiled, and Ramman watched as her skin sagged along her jaw and slipped down around her eyes, revealing red flesh and ivory bone.
Promise you will initiate him. Our son.
"Yes—yes. Of course." The buzzing was unbearably loud now, the floor vibrating under his feet as he stood shakily, pushed her out of the way, reached for the doorway, which wavered in front of him as he staggered forward through the hazy space between dream and reality. Ramman found himself growing angry with himself. He'd never forgotten the necessity of initiating Malik, but he had entertained the thought of holding off for another year. (He was intelligent, and brave, and pious, but in many ways he was still so weak.) But no longer. This unprompted intervention of the spirits filled Ramman with humiliation, fury, and the immediate need to find his son.
She was still watching him, reaching for him, and Ramman shook her off, trying to move forward. "I'll initiate him, I promise!"
And then she was gone, and he was falling against the doorframe, and the the entire room was shaking, dust and sand streaming from the ceiling. Ramman ignored everything, took a shaky step through the doorway, and fell against the opposite wall of the corridor as he shouted for Malik.
He could hear someone screaming. He forced himself to stand, moved along the corridor to Malik's room, where he saw Ishizu standing in the doorway, eyes wide and hands pressed against her mouth. Her eyes were closed, but all around them he could hear the buzzing of insects, crawling, creeping, clacking their legs and jaws against the stone. They'll break free soon, he couldn't help thinking. They can smell fear.
Then he was in the doorway and Rishid was standing over Malik's bed, shaking the boy by the shoulders, and a cold rage swelled within Ramman's heart, solidifying the world around him as he took Rishid by the shoulders and pulled back, and they both toppled to the floor and he heard his enraged rants as if they were coming from someone else, not him (but you were thinking it, weren't you? He's the reason this is happening—he's the evil here, he's the jealous one, he's poisoning your son right in front of you and you've done nothing—)
Soon.
Malik was still screaming, and Ramman turned to the bed and struck him in the face.
"Shut up," he said. "It's just an earthquake."
Malik's eyes opened, filled with tears, and Ishizu took a hesitant step forward.
"Don't touch him!" Ramman said. His wife was right. They'd waited to long to begin the initiation, they'd coddled Malik and had given the whole family too much freedom. Not anymore.
I will do it, he promised her silently. I will carve his inheritance on his skin, just like my father did to me, and his father before him. It doesn't matter who opposes us. I will have my heir.
No one wanted him to initiate Malik. Rishid most of all, but Rishid's opinion didn't matter. The certainty that the outsider was poisoning Malik's mind was growing stronger and stronger every day, and while Ramman couldn't throw the boy out completely—that was impossible, now that Rishid knew about the existence of their tribe—he could keep him as far from Malik as possible. In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, Ramman spent as much time as he could teaching his son the scriptures, showing him the necessity of the initiation rite, and every time Malik showed hesitation, Ramman would reveal the scars on his own back, explaining that these scars were what make him as Ishtar, and Malik would always concede.
Ishizu was harder to convince. "He's too young," she said. "He won't be able to stand it."
"I was his age when I underwent the ritual," he says. While she was young, and female, she was still his daughter and she'd shown signs of wisdom in the past. Begrudgingly, he explained his reasoning to her. "I've had a...a vision. Malik needs the initiation."
"There's no need to rush him." She didn't lose her calm, even if her voice wavered. "You know how he is. I'm afraid—"
"It's fine," he said. "He'll be fine. This happens every generation."
She didn't persist any further, but her aura of worry didn't fade, and more and more often he'd run across her praying in her room, or pacing the corridors late at night, hands twisting around each other as she recited spells of protection.
It was just as well, he thought. Malik needed all the protection the gods could afford. Ramman has started to dream of his wife again. By now, the decay was obvious; her skin peeling back to showcase the formation of her skull, and blood splattering on the floor and on the sheets as she crawled into the bed beside him, whispering reminders of his own initiation (but he only remembered flames—).
I gave you a son, now make him an Ishtar.
I will, he thought. And I'll set you free, too, even if you are the one who brought the outsider here.
He will try to stop you.
Let him try.
You will make our son a true Ishtar?
I said I would, didn't I? Even as he thought it — for he didn't dare say the words out loud, didn't dare acknowledge the spirit who waited beside him — he could feel cold fingers brushing against his shoulders, her wasted sighs against the back of his neck, the sand trickling down the back of her throat. This was more than a dream; it was a vision. He had been careless with Rishid, but no longer. Malik will earn his name, and Rishid will find himself without a birthright once more.
And when he finally did have Malik tied to the table, he found himself carving the symbols with a fervency he could only attribute to divine inspiration (ridiculous, he had every symbol memorized, had felt them carved into his own back as slowly as he now carved them into Malik) and he moved quickly, though the heat of the fire made the work near unbearable; he has to keep wiping his palm on his robe so that the blade won't slip. But he laughed as he worked, because the Ishtar line was finally secured, and finally Rishid would have no choice but to admit he had never been one of them. No, he wouldn't be able to hurt Malik again—
So he kept working, Malik's muffled screams impossible to hear over the roaring in his ears, the burning pulse of blood and fire and ink, and the creaking grumble sound of stone grating against stone.
"This is it," Ramman whispered to his son. "Everything we've waited for. You are a true king now, Malik." And as he spoke the knife slipped under his hand and Ramman swore, because the symbol is ruined (but no, no, it's better like this. Why have an eagle when you could have a phoenix, after all, and didn't Malik deserves the best of the best?)
Inspired, Ramman elaborated on the carving, adding details that he'd never seen before. The rod became a scepter; history became prophecy. This was better, he thought. This was the true Ishtar heritage. He's so elated that he works for hours; until sweat drip into his eyes and Malik's skin reflects the flames in a mesmerizing display of resolution, of finality and fear and fire, and Ramman looked at his finished work and thought, yes. This is what she was trying to tell me.
When he found the symbols Rishid had carved to his own skin (jealousy, he knew) Ramman nearly killed the boy then and there. How dare he take the name of Ishtar? He, who was nothing, had no pedigree, nothing to offer but servitude and bad dreams?
He doesn't fit here.
No. He doesn't.
But there was nothing to worry about. After the initiation Malik attacked his studies with a unprecedented ferocity. Comforted by the notion that finally Malik would take control of the tribe's legacy, Ramman was content to guide his son and to keep a stern eye on everyone else. Secrecy and security only grew stronger as he did everything in his power to ensure that Malik would grow into the perfect leader. Finally he had a son worthy of the Ishtar name.
Ishizu was the only one who seemed to hold any reservations; her incessant prayers had only intensified since Malik's initiation.
Her prayers weren't the spontaneous kind, she spent hours on her knees reciting the scriptures. Nearly every time Ramman walked by the temple she was in there, muttering, her waist growing thinner and thinner under her shift, and he grows uncertain feeling about the constant piety. His wife had been like that, too, always praying.
Look where that got you, he told her silently. All your prayers and all the gods gave you was a painful death. (And Rishid, but see what he's done to us.)
But Ramman had stopped dreaming about his wife, and Malik had stopped having bad dreams. Rishid stayed out of Ramman's way, and life returned to the way it was.
Eventually, Ramman returned to his old habit of studying while the others slept, reading the prophecies over and over again. He'd become more and more certain that the pharaoh would return soon, and the prophecies must take place in the correct order.
Nothing could be better, Ramman thought. He had his heir, he'd fulfilled his duty.
It was almost a year later, in the early hours of the morning, when the buzzing sound returned.
Ramman was hunched over a scroll, studying it by the light of a candle, and didn't attribute the sound to anything but exhaustion. His vision had already started to blur; it was probably time for him to return to bed. But something prompted him to look up, and a flash of light—nothing much, just the ancient certainty that there had been something there—beckoned him, and he stepped away from the table and toward the doorway, where a wind gathered throughout every corridor and howled in the farthest reaches of the catacombs, and he began to walk.
He didn't know where he was going, not at first, but he recognized the path and let himself be guided by intuition. Eventually he reached the ancient portion of the catacombs, where the writing on the walls was worn and illegible. Tonight, he recognized in them a pattern he hadn't seen before, one he still somehow knew. Malik could interpret this better than I, he thought, and that thought prompted him forward, through the winding passage, and after only a few minutes he found himself at the entrance of the labyrinth.
There was something in there, hiding, and Ramman knew it, even as he reached for torches that extinguished themselves as soon as he touched them. The evil that first arrived with the strange child Rishid had only grown stronger over the years, building up its strength and waiting (but for what?) It was a creeping sensation along his limbs; the tread of hundreds of tiny legs crawling up his arms, pincers grazing along his skin. We are ready. We are coming. It was something ancient and dark and wise, and Ramman knew in every inch of his body that not even the everlasting protection of stone would stay the powers at work here.
"What are you hiding?" he whispered, and the wind carried his voice down the corridor and echoed its answer back to him from a thousand different directions. HIDING Hiding hiding
At the end of the passage, Ramman saw a faint figure, one which filled him with dread. (Ah, yes, you, who can't stay dead, always watching, always telling me how to raise my son, my blood, my Malik) He took a step away from the figure, and then another, fleeing from it as it darted in and out of his vision, never coming closer than it needed. All around them his voice still echoed out of the passageways in strange whispers he now knew belonged to the stones themselves.
He stumbled in the dark, the old unkept path scratching his palms and bruising his knees. He rubbed the back of his hand across his lips, pulled on his beard, rose to his feet. He closed his eyes, listened, heard the soft pat of skin against stone, persistent, getting closer. Arms outstretched, he held his hands in front of him as he fled from the footsteps, the slow shuffle of his wife's ghost, until his hands landed against stone and all the whispers faded into a soft sigh of contentment.
He opened his eyes. There was a ventilation shaft above him, and through it shone the faintest glimmer of sunlight. Morning.
It is time.
He turned toward the source of the voice, saw nothing. He was in a part of the catacombs he'd seen before; most of his close relatives were buried here.
There were hollows carved into the stones, and in each hollow rested a shroud, and beneath that shroud an Ishtar. There are no headstones, no epitaphs, but Ramman didn't need them. He knew who lay under each shroud, had memorized his genealogies when he was a child, and he named them in his head as he shuffled forward.
Kareem Ishtar. Nidal Ishtar. Badr Ishtar. Rayhan and Sargon and Asad Ishtar. All of them family, all of them his blood.
And then he was at the end of the row, at a shroud he hadn't seen before, one cleaner than the others. There was a smear in the dust at his feet, wet globules of blood on surface of the shroud. With a shaking hand, Ramman wrapped his fingers around the edge of the shroud, pulled back.
He knew what he would see there. His wife's body, shrunken and desiccated but still there, still bleeding from the womb and from the mouth and from the eyes, and she turned in her grave to stare at him, her jaw falling open in a dry creak to reveal a withered tongue.
"You know what you have to do," she whispered.
Ramman shook his head, found his heart rattling in his chest and held on to the shroud as if it was a lifeline, because he couldn't unhear the raspy quality of her voice, the constant buzzing in his ears as she turned further and raised her arms, revealing what she held there.
The corpse of an infant, a boy, with wisps of black hair fused to the misshapen contours of his skull, and the suddenly Ramman remembered how his wife and son had lay on the birthing table, still as corpses, and the pale pale hue of Malik's hair—
And then Rishid, towering over them both, (the way the serpent of the nile stood over the earth as he waited to destroy Ra, but he always died when morning came, he always died—)
"You know what you have to do," she said again, the buzzing noise growing stronger and more forceful until Ramman was sure that the tomb was collapsing around them. The gaping holes of the infant's corpse turned toward him, deepened, and its mouth opened and it screamed in a voice that no child has ever possessed, a voice that shook Ramman where he stood and echoed down the corridors with a roar that grew to a fervent crescendo and he found himself running, not entirely aware of his destination, only certain of one thing; that all of this, somehow, was the stranger's fault, that he'd lost wife and now his son (no, not Malik, never Malik) to the tall dark-skinned heretic who watched him with resentful eyes.
He scrambled in the dark through the corridor, going entirely by touch and memory, the roar of the spirits behind him fading but never quite disappearing from his ears, and when he at last found a lit corridor, he nearly collapsed in exhaustion.
He didn't collapse. He leaned against the wall, panting, for only a moment, then pressed on, to, to (to Malik must save Malik) Malik's bedroom.
And then he was in the doorway and there was Rishid, leaning over the bed, and he pushed the boy (no, a man, but when did he get so tall?) aside and fell over the bed, screaming for Rishid to get away (don't touch him don't touch no get away from my son!)
But there was nothing there, just a cold sheets and cold pillows, and an even colder terror filled Ramman's chest as he stared up at Rishid.
"What did you do to him?"
Rishid didn't have time to reply; Ramman lunged toward him, shouting for help, and as he stared into Rishid's face, he saw a terror there that he hasn't seen before. Yes, you bastard. I know what you are, and you'll die for what you've done.
And then the acolytes came, and two of them wrestled Rishid to the ground as a third informed him that the alarm at the entrance had been tripped, that Ishizu was also missing, and that someone had seen them both by the entrance to the tunnels only hours earlier.
Ramman relaxed a little in the knowledge that, for the moment, Malik was alive. But that didn't mean he was safe. Even if he did return safely, leaving the tomb was a infraction punishable by death. Only his status as Ramman's son would save his life.
Rishid was bound and left to face Ramman's judgment. But there was no hurry. Ramman wouldn't kill him until Malik returned.
He put a sword in the fire and waited.
There were no words exchanged between them. There was no need. Rishid knew what he was at fault for, and Ramman knew why Rishid had to die. Cut the head off of the snake, he thought, and the sun will rise again. Even as he watched the blade turn red, he could hear the scratch of sandpaper against stone, the faint echoed screams of the spirit that had followed him out of the labyrinth, the voices multiplying in the flames and in his fury until they were a cacophony he could not silent.
When the blade was red, he placed it flat against Rishid's skin, taking satisfaction in the knowledge that, finally, the boy would be getting rite he'd always wanted. (How do you like that? You've failed one too many times, but you won't fail to die when I kill you.)
He placed the sword in the fire again, waited for it to turn red, repeated the process. It goes on and on, and Rishid never said a word except to scream, but Ramman doesn't mind. He was waiting for his son. Malik had to see the evil destroyed, had to know what it truly meant to be a tombkeeper. But the minutes start to take their toll, and by the time his children rush in, both of them equally terrified, he's exhausted from standing by the fire and he turns, relieved. Almost over.
"You've broken the laws of our clan," he told them. "And I will give you your punishment later. But first—" he took the blade, closed his hand around it, shook his head once to clear the buzzing (stop screaming you infernal woman it's done now) and raised his arm, plunging the blade into Rishid's back.
He could feel the evil steaming out through the blade, purging the clan and the tombs from the impurity of the outsider's presence, and he couldn't help laughing, because finally his family was safe; the eater of souls had been destroyed.
And then he turned toward Malik.
"Come here," he said, inviting him to witness the birth of the sun. "It's your turn."
But Malik wasn't looking at him, he was staring at the floor, and he was screaming, and his voice blended with the buzzing in Ramman's ears and the echoes of the spirits and becomes them, and Malik's hands tightened in his hair and he laughed, in a gurgling, hysterical voice, and when he looked up, he smiled, and Ramman sees his own wife's smile.
Thank you for killing Rishid for me.
Ramman couldn't hear anything after that; the roar in his ears grew too loud and deafened him, but Malik never stopped laughing as he lowered his hands, grinned at Ramman, and the room shook as the walls caved in and the snake unfurled his head, because demons never died, and Ramman was only a man.
One mistake unmakes the man.
He looked past the demon to Ishizu. Pray your prayers now, my daughter. You're all that's left of us. Survive. Protect our heritage.
Remember what we've done.
End
A/N: There are multiple references in here to the Egyptian myth of Apep. From what I've read, he was an early incarnation of evil, usually represented by a snake who tried to kill Ra every evening but was always killed in the morning by Ra's guards. The line Ramman quotes in the labyrinth is a paraphrase of an Egyptian text (I think it's the Book of the Dead).
Reviews are always appreciated! I don't have much experience with this kind of story, so I'd be interested in hearing how it goes over with readers.