A/N: Surprise, everyone, we're back! And the good news is that I've got things written all the way up to Part 16, so there won't be any horrendous gaps. For a while, at least. :) The current plan is to post a new chapter once every two weeks on Wednesdays.
Welcome back, everybody!
Historian's Note: This story takes place before, during and (eventually) after the original story through Millennium World, following the canon established in the manga. There will be spoilers, so proceed with caution.
Soundtrack: 'Haunted' on 8tracks.
Beta: SkyTurtle.
Warnings: TRIGGER WARNING. Fairly graphic descriptions of wounds, injuries and near death this chapter.
Disclaimer:Yu-Gi-Oh! and related characters are © to Kazuki Takahashi.
…
Haunted
Part VIII
Raven Ehtar
…
The first days of the new year are passed, the month of Tekh and its festivals and rituals to the Gods all properly observed and celebrated. Now is the second month of the year, Menhet, when the festivals are less thickly spread, though no less fervently observed. The farmers' fields are truly submerged beneath the rising waters of the river, bringing the blessings of Hapi in the forms of mud, flies and a riotous odor. There are none who doubt that this is a year that will be blessed by the Gods. The people are happy and content that theirs will be a relatively easy lot for the year.
Had he the energy to spare for the effort, the boy would have despised them all.
Death is never a far off companion to a child living on the streets with no family to shield them. The specter lurks near at hand, always ready to lead one into the afterlife and stand in judgment before Anubis. Anything could prove to be the outstretched hand of Death were one not always careful and vigilant. Starvation, illness, drowning, accident, a beast whose hunger proved greater than your own; any of these could snatch one away to the afterlife. All of them, to greater or lesser degree, the boy has faced and come away still in possession of his soul.
The boy has faced worse than hunger and jackals in his short life, and yet to succumb.
Injury and infection are new enemies, ones that are difficult to battle.
Carefully, the boy touches the skin around his right eye, and bites back a yelp as fresh pain lances through his body.
In the many days since the whip opened his face, the wound has still not healed as it should. At first the flesh had begun to mend itself, coming back together and scabbing closed, but within two days, it showed the first signs of infection. The wound had swelled, and heat radiating out against his hand when he touched his face. In another two days his eyes was forced shut from the swelling, and pus oozed down his face whenever the gash reopened.
Fear had taken hold of him, then. After taking his injury, the boy had successfully retreated to his abandoned farm house with the help of the Little God. Since then, the boy had not ventured out, choosing to wait until he was healed before risking it. His stolen home had some food, and there was certain to be some coming retribution for what happened in town. The fallen guard would surely call for some kind of revenge.
But he was not healing. He was getting worse as the days spun by. There was a creeping weakness stealing over his limbs that had nothing to do with hunger, and with one eye sealed shut, how was he to see enemies approaching? Fear crept in with the weakness.
What if he loses his eye?
Vague memories of his youngest days, before the night of screams, pushed their way to the surface of his mind. Memories of someone, a boy who was not him, screaming in pain, his arm clothed in red. He had been climbing the rocks… and fallen…? He had been bound and cleaned, but his arm healed slowly. It had become infected, growing hot and swollen, dribbling horrid, stinking fluids. More than anything, the boy remembered that smell.
Did his wound smell the same way that other's had smelled?
Through the haze, he remembered that long ago boy growing sick, feverish, tossing in his pallet, his eyes too bright and seeing nothing.
He remembered a voice saying the poison must be let out of him. He remembered a sharp knife, and fresh screams.
The boy, terror filling him for what might happen, for an eye he might lose, had found his own knife. If it was the poison that made his face swell and his limbs weak, then he would dig it all out.
That had been several days ago. The boy remembers the pain of the blade sinking into his cheek, somehow worse since it was done by his own hand. Blood and poison had run together down his chin, plopping into the dust, leaving craters. Two cuts running across the whip gasp, and it felt as though all of the poison had left him.
It had seemed at first to have done the trick. The next morning he had been able to open his eye again, and while he still felt weakened, his face was not so heated as it had been. In another couple of days, he had thought, he would be able to go out and replenish his dwindling food. Very carefully, of course, no brash wig snatches like last time, but something more than simply sitting around.
It is now a few days later, and the boy cannot summon the strength for even the most careful of thieving opportunities. Even stealing eggs from a negligent river duck seems beyond him, now. His face has worsened more than ever, sealing shut his eye, the skin hot as a furnace and tender to even a gentle breeze. Worse, the poison in his face has sunk into his body, sickening him, the heat spreading until he feels like a well cooked hare. Whatever strength he'd held on to is now leaving him, so to even stand and drink from the water jug is too great a feat.
Not that it matters if he could. The jug is dry. There is no water to drink.
Lying on the floor of his stolen home, his bones aching from the fires lit inside him, the boy stares at the ceiling and wonders if this is how he will be lured to the afterlife. Choking of thirst as poison riddles his body from the inside out. It is not how he thought he would die, of the many ways he might have over the years, and somehow it almost seems like a cheap way to be taken. He has food, shelter, a small measure of protection by his own hand, and he would die now?
It doesn't seem fair. To survive so long, to have it taken away now, before he is done…
…
Day passes, as does the night. The boy wakes sluggishly from dreams he does not remember, but which leave him certain he is not where he is meant to be.
He's thirsty. As once he had ached of hunger, now he craves water. His tongue, too thick to fit in his mouth properly, cleaves to the roof of his mouth, his throat aching. He begins to roll his body to the water jug, every muscle protesting, before he remembers: the water is gone. Defeated, the boy falls back.
Were he well he would laugh at so small an obstacle. Water gathering was one of the simplest of tasks, and while not perfectly safe, it would give him no trouble. Were he well.
Too hot to be comfortable, but too weak to do much to help himself, the boy drifts back to sleep, the right side of his face aflame.
…
Whimpers wake the boy. Confused, he struggles to consciousness, looking about him with one bleary eye.
The shadows have changed, lengthened across the floor, the remaining light the gold and scarlet glow of a dying day. The boy has slept the entire day without intending to. Why then should he still feel so tired?
Whose quiet weeping had woken him from his dreams?
There, in the near corner is another sleeping pallet, and in the pallet the shape of another human body, sharing his space.
Perhaps feeling the attention on him, the figure shifts, letting out another high, weak moan of distress. A thin blanket falls away, and the boy finds himself staring into an unfamiliar face, shining with sweat and twisted in pain.
It seems to take the other boy a moment to realize he is not alone and to gather his thoughts. After a moment he smiles. It looks only slightly less pain-filled as the expression that came before.
"You're the last one."
The boy frowns, and the right side of his face burns. He tries to focus. "What…?"
"They called us thieves. Lies. But now you are a thief, and you are all that's left. So, truth."
Nothing the other boy says makes any sort of sense. He tries twisting his brain around the words, to understand what he is being told, but understanding refuses to come. As he stares at the boy speaking nonsense, he feels he recognizes him…
"Killed us all. Except for you. And me." The boy smiles and it is horribly like looking into a skull. "Didn't get us, did they?"
He needs water, his tongue and throat demand it before he can speak, but still he tries. "Who… are… you?"
"You're with me…" The other boy's gaze goes far away, his smile collapsing into a grimace. He writhes on his pallet, curling on himself, turning away, apparently no longer interested in conversation. In a voice strangled with pain, he murmurs, "Soon… we'll all be dead."
The boy tries to understand, to call out to the other boy, but his voice will not work. A wave of drowsiness overtakes him, and he's swept into sleep like a careless swimmer in the river.
…
When he next opens his eye, the second pallet is gone. It and its occupant had never been there.
…
The poison coursing through his veins is turning him into a piece of the desert. It is the only explanation for how during the day he would burn with the heat of the deepest sands, while as soon as the sun set he would be so cold.
The thirst has grown too much, and the boy now walks, stumbling, by the light of the moon, towards the river.
He does not feel much stronger, but with the loss of the beating heat a walk outside does not seem so completely impossible. It is still not easy, though. His limbs are weak, and even with the blanket of his pallet draped over his shoulders, the night cuts into him. Like the heat from before, it feels as though it radiates from inside him. He can barely keep hold of the dipper he's brought with for the water. No jug, there is no way he could manage its weight empty, let alone full of river.
Weeds and stones catch and his rip his sandals free. He does not stop for them. His feet are so calloused it makes no difference, and he does not know how long he will be able to keep moving. Best not to waste any time.
The boy does not try touching his face anymore. The pain is too intense, but more than that, the picture his fingers describe to him is too horrible. It is hardly a face anymore, but a raw and weeping mass of flesh. Would he ever be whole again?
He pushes such thoughts out of his mind well as he can. There is no point when simply setting one foot before the other takes so much effort.
The water is beautiful in the moonlight. The river itself would sparkle, land bound stars flowing along on earth, but this is only a piece of the river. A small wanderer whose sense of urgency was all left behind. Its surface is calm, an almost perfectly flat sheet of silver.
Even as he is, the boy does not rush forward to plunge in his head and drink. Beautiful as it is, the river and its children hold dangers, and only prey would choose to disregard them.
Ears pricked and eyes scanning carefully, the boy approaches the water. No dangers reveal themselves, and the boy's shivers become more violent as the water he needs comes closer and closer.
The temptation to rush forward worsens with every step. So close, but having to remain so cautious…
No threats appear, no scale revealed, no stealthy footfall save his own sounds through the darkness. Finally, the boy's thirst is slaked.
The water is so cold the boy's insides practically freeze. He means to sip, to look around, and sip again, to stay safe in his drinking… but the water is so good. It's been too long since he's drunk anything, and he drinks deeply, gulping down the river as fast as he can to scoop it up. He drinks so much, so fast, he begins to feel sick, but still he does not stop.
He was made into the desert, and this is his Inundation, inexorable in its onslaught.
A twig snaps in the darkness.
The boy spins, heart in his mouth, one heel slipping in the silt rich mud. The boy's balance, already precarious, is completely lost, and he tumbles backward. In the moonlight he can make out the shape of a man, large and imposing, coming toward him. Before he tumbles completely, the boy gathers every scrap of strength he still has and pushes.
There is a flash of white, a familiar wrenching in his gut, and then a hard slap against his back as he finally lands, tumbling into the river.
Water, cold and heavy, closes over him. He has a brief understanding of what the river feels like in his lungs, every muscle locking in the cold, before darkness overtakes him.
…
Confused and confusing flashes of consciousness, bits of light and sound snatched from the murky depths of oblivion assail him. No logic connects them, nor do they seem to have any connection to him. He is merely an observer, a drifter on the current, catching glimpses of the distant shores. A water jug that is not his own, an incessant scratching, like birds' claws on stone, coolness that does not freeze, and warmth that does not burn; an aged face half hidden in shadow, staring at him.
None of it makes sense to the boy, but none of it matters, either. He drifts along, carried by on the river's placid current, neither touched or touching what is happening around him. It's a pleasant feeling, this unmooring from reality. He wonders, with thoughts that are also prone to drifting away from him, if he had died, and now travels the river of the Underworld. It is not so bad if it is, he decides. Certainly it is calmer than any time he had enjoyed when he lived. If all of the afterlife is such as this, then death is far from the worst that could happen to someone.
As unmoored from the concept of time as he is from reality, the boy drifts, enjoying the view.
…
Reality comes back to him slowly, like the light of Ra along the eastern horizon.
The first thing he can process is simply that he is no longer floating along the river of the dead. He is still, lying on his back and all too aware and attached to the sensation of hardness pressing into his spine, hips and the backs of his legs.
He opens his eye, and though there is very little light, the boy squints. It feels as though his eyeballs were plucked out and then returned with the desert coating them. A moment of blinking does nothing to wash his eye of sand, and only makes him aware that the desert has crept in and filled him completely. His throat is dry, his tongue a dry slab of stone in his mouth. Even attempting to move a single arm tells him the same tale: he is a hollow shell, filled with the heavy sands of the desert.
Slowly, the boy's vision clears enough to look about him. The first thing his eye falls upon is a water jug - strangely familiar? - with a dipping ladle resting beside it.
Nothing else does the boy need to see. Fighting the heaviness of his limbs, which seem to be becoming a very part of the land with how little they wish to move, the boy lurches toward the promise of water.
The heaviness extends to his very fingertips, making them as clay as he fumbles for the ladle. To reach the handle, let alone to get the ladle over the rim of the jug, the boy must twist his body and come up into a half seated position. The effort is almost too much for him, and by the time the bowl of the dipper has splashed into the jug, he is gasping for breath. It doesn't matter, nor do the questions that hover around the edges of his awareness about where he is or what has happened. Nothing matters save the need for water, sweet water to wash away the desert that weighs him down.
The angle and length of the dipper makes things awkward, and most of the water in the bowl spills out back into the jug or outside it to the table on which it sits before the boy can bring it to his lips. Enough remains, though, a mouthful of the precious stuff which he gulps down so hard it hurts.
The boy repeats the process once, and twice, and a vague memory begins to nag at him. This is familiar, this desperate drinking. Familiar and somehow important. Something to do with the river…
He slows in his ladling. The effort grows no easier, but more difficult with repetitions, and the unclear memories distract him. He had been drinking at the river, hadn't he? So thirsty, he had felt he could drink the river dry, leaving only reeds, crocodiles and the great water horses wading in mud. Then, something had happened…
Another sensation makes itself known to the boy. One he had been aware of but had ignored with many other sensations, but which now demands his attention. His face feels strange. At least, the right side of it does. A sort of stiffness makes it difficult to move, and though the boy is aware of some scratchiness, that is overshadowed by numbness.
Setting down the dipper, more memories trying to make themselves known, the boy tentatively explores his face with his fingers.
The left side feels normal, the flesh is soft, warm under his touch, and his left cheek can feel his hand in turn. The right side, however, makes his stomach turn. It is still and rough to the touch, and registers no sensation at all to being touched. The hovering memories rush at him out of the dark and all at once. Memories of a whip, the gash, the infection, the knife… The boy's heart hammers in his chest. His left eye is fine, but what has happened to his flesh?
When his fingers find an edge to the rough and the numbness, he almost cries out in relief. Not his own flesh, he realizes, he had been feeling a covering. Something had been put over his face, and that is what he felt, not his own dried and dead face.
An edge found, the boy begins to pull at it. Now he knows it is not his flesh he feels, he must feel his own face. He has to know what the wound has done, how much worse it has grown.
"Leave that, boy, unless you enjoyed having fever."
He freezes. He wants to leap to his feet, to crouch defensively, ready to run or at a desperate extreme, to fight. But the water has done little to wash away the sand and silt in his body. There would be no chance of getting away even if he could convince his body to obey him. Only his eye is capable of quick movement, and it darts about the darkened room until it falls upon a doorway, barely distinguishable from the wall, where stands a human shape.
The boy stares at the figure, heart racing, attempting the escape the rest of his body and failing. It is not an impressive figure, even in the poor light. Short and broad, which would normally mean muscled, this one looked as though he could, or possibly once did, run to fat. It also looks as though he, for it is a he, wears very little ornamentation on his body. No wig, no jewels, no metals, only a longish kilt and a sort of wrap over his shoulders.
He doesn't look like a guard, soldier or slave trader, and with those possibilities made more remote the boy's heart begins to calm even as his confusion and suspicion grow. Who is it that has caught him?
Apparently deciding that the boy has had long enough to examine him, the figure moves out of the doorway. He approaches slowly, as one would with a snake or jackal, cautious and watchful for any sign of a flashing fang. The boy feels a momentary stab of pride that even so weakened as he is, he can still inspire some fear.
As the man comes close, the boy can see how old he is. Wrinkles like cracks in a fired pot splay out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he doesn't stand quite straight. His shoulders hunch forward and his back is slightly bent, as though he were carrying a weight. He is carrying something in his hands, the boy sees, but it is only a bowl and a heel of bread - not enough to leave a man bent in strain, not even an old one.
The aged one comes near enough to set down his burden on the table, and looks at the boy with sharp eyes. After a moment he grunts and nods his head once. "It is good you wake, boy. I feared your soul too far gone to make the journey back to the land of the living. Some time yet before you sit in judgment before Anubis."
The boy scowls as best he can through the coverings on his face. What the old man says makes him uncomfortable, stirs memories of dreams already fading into nothing.
"Now, let us see…" and the man reaches for him, for his face with broad and grasping hands.
The boy jerks back, nearly falling all the way back to the pallet, a growl rising from his throat. Whatever help the old man might seem to have done while the boy was unaware, he doesn't trust the why of it all. Nothing is done for nothing, everything is done for something. Whatever it is this old man wants, the boy intends to give him none of it.
Rather than pull away, the old man actually smiles at the snarl thrown at him. He drops his hand, a twinkle in his ancient eye. "Ah, there. That is good! Fire and spirit, fight and defiance, the best medicines never invented by doctors. Hold those, boy, and you do more for yourself than any others will ever do for you, oh yes."
Nothing new in that, the thought scuttles across the boy's brain.
"Very well, then," the old man says, and takes a stool out from beneath the table. He sits down, closer to the boy than he would like, and takes up again the bowl he had set down. As he brings it around, the boy can smell an aroma coming from it that makes his stomach clench. "If you are so thirsty, might I also assume you hungry?"
The boy's eyes - and nose - lock onto the bowl. It is half full of some kind of thick gruel that smells heavily of onion and garlic. His mouth floods with saliva, and as he watches he sees steam rise up. It's hot, cooked, and not cold as so many of his own meals.
The old man lifts up a spoon full of gruel and holds it out to him, as though he intends to feed him like an infant. When the boy tears his eyes away from the hovering food to look at the old man, a faint smile is playing his mouth.
That the food might be poisoned is a brief thought, easily ignored. Looming much larger in the boy's mind is the indignity of being seen so weak as to need to be fed. Lying in a bed or not, he is not so helpless as that!
Lip curling, the boy lunges forward and snatches the bowl out of the old man's hand, ignoring the spoon entirely.
Gruel slops out of the bowl a little, but the boy holds onto what is left, challenging his captor to try and take it back with his stare. The old man only chuckles at him, showing no inclination to take it back.
Still wary, the boy looks down at his prize. It is warm; he can feel the heat through the clay in his hands, as it rises from the bowl to his face, bringing delicious smells along with it. His stomach cramps and his jaw tightens in anticipation, but he hesitates. A lifetime of mistrust is not so easily swept aside, and he glances back up at the old man.
Without words, the aged one seems to understand. Quirking an eyebrow at the boy, he lifts the spoon, still full of gruel, and very deliberately eats it.
Satisfied, the boy hesitates no longer, and tips the bowl like a mug to eat with no spoon.
The old man chuckles again, then, "Go slowly, boy. You'll choke if you breathe it, and vomit if you swallow too quickly, oh yes."
He wants to consume the food even faster just to defy the voice telling him what to do, but the advice is sound, and he has no desire to choke or vomit. He slows, enjoying the flavors and the sensation of food weighing his stomach.
As he eats, the old man speaks. The boy does his best to ignore him, but his cracking, wizened voice chews at his ear.
"I suppose you must wonder where you are and who it is that had captured you, eh, little thief? You needn't be so suspicious; I am no guardsman or dog of Pharaoh, nor some poor fool you have robbed in the past. Though I have heard of you. Oh yes, and know you by sight with that mane of yours. Oh, yes. My name is Iumeri, and once I was a great and respected scribe for the Pharaoh Himself. Those days have long passed, I'm afraid, and now I am here. I scribble the nonsense of peasants for pennies and doggerel of merchants for my meals, when once I wrote the histories of our great land, the declarations of our Pharaoh!" The old man sighs, the sound of wind down a forgotten tomb.
"Long past those days, oh yes. But not forgotten, no. Never forgotten. And so long as a thing is not forgotten, it cannot be said to be truly gone. Remember that, little thief, if you remember nothing else."
The old man pauses, staring off to a darkened corner. The boy watches him carefully, this rambling, dusty codger. This is perhaps the longest anyone has ever spoken to him without the inclusion of threats to his life or limbs, and he is not sure he likes it any more than previous treatment. The gruel is good, though, and he knows any attempt to escape would be thwarted by his own weakness. So he sits and listens, ears open for clues as to what the ancient one wants.
"I had not expected to find you so easily as I did, khered," he goes on, and the boy does his best not to growl at the use of the world 'child.' "Truth be, I doubted I would find you at all. After all, if the dogs had not found you and fed your bones to the river in so many years, than what chance of a creaking scribe? Mmm. And then I heard of the guardsman, the 'tragedy' that befell him at the hands of the little thief with the white mane. I heard that tale and I despaired. Not for the fallen dog, may his bones nourish the desert cats. No, for the thief he had tried to take. Oh, yes, he. For surely such a boy, who had survived so long, would not be so foolish as to remain in Dendera after killing a guardsman and so wounding another. Surely he would be incense on the wind, lost to me forever, or at least until another rumor reached my ear."
The old man taps the organ in question with a finger, his expression taking on a sly kind of moue. The boy slows his eating, watching him through narrowed eyes. It sounds as though the old man has been looking for him, and that cannot bode well. He said he was once a scribe to Pharaoh, does he hope to regain favor by capturing a thief? Small prize, but perhaps it is all the old man can hope to manage.
"Oh, yes. Imagine my surprise when I found the boy, the very boy, at the river's edge. Imagine my delight, my joy to have discovered him at last. Imagine my despair when I realized his condition, my panic as he tumbled into the river and apparently right into the afterlife."
He leans forward in his stool, the bright intensity of his eyes making the boy lean away.
"I gathered you up, stole you from the river's greedy grasp, oh yes, and brought you back here. For near a week you have laid here, senseless, speaking nonsense to the shadows as I pulled you back, inch by inch from Anubis' halls. I have hidden you, kept you safe and alive as you jabbered." The old face stretches into a grin that almost makes it look like a skull in the flickering lamp light. "You even tried to attack me in your fever. Oh, yes. Though those attempts were even less successful than the one beside the river."
The boy's heart thumps hard in his chest. Memory is beginning to trickle in as the old man speaks. He remembers the long days of pain and weakness as the whip gash across his eye began to fester, how he had struggled to keep it clean and to drain it, and how he had finally found the strength to pick himself up and carry his body to the river for a drink.
The old man. He was the one who had startled him at the water's edge, the one who had made him tumble back… Which meant it was he who the boy had attacked, yes. In terror and confusion, he had reached for that place inside where the Little God resided and pushed. Obviously he'd survived the encounter, hadn't even been frightened enough to flee. And now…
Now he is at the mercy of an old man who wants him for some unknown reason, and who knows too much of him already. He knows of the Little God.
Experimentally, the boy reaches inside himself, prodding carefully as he would a sore tooth, searching for any sign the Little God is still there, has not left him.
The Little God is there, but the feeling is faint. The Little God is weak, just as he is. Any hope that he could be saved by the pale serpent bearing his eyes withers away.
The old man has leaned back again in his stool, still with the over-bright eyes fixed upon him, gaze keen as a hunting bird awaiting its unsuspecting prey. After so long and rambling a speech, he seems just as willing to remain silent and to stare, waiting for the boy to do something. Keeping one eye upon him, the boy tips back the last of the gruel in the bowl. He chews it slowly, refusing to look away, putting as much defiance into every silent moment as he can. He is weak, nearly helpless, even his Little God too feeble to help him, but there is no reason to act as though that were all the case.
When his mouth is clear he stares a moment longer, then sneers. "What do you want, iawi rehew?"
The old man's lip quirks, he's almost certain he's going to laugh that tomb-breeze laugh again, but he does not. "May the Gods be merciful, he speaks! Though I suppose it was too much to hope that he would also be polite?" He raises a brow.
In response, the boy spits the worst insult he knows, picked up from overhearing angry, drunken soldiers. It's enough to make a second brow join the first.
"Well. Too much, indeed. What do I want from you, khered?" He stretches back, and it is unknown if it is the stool or his bones which creak more. "That will largely depend upon whether or not you are who I suspect you are. But let me first tell you, boy, that the only thing holding you here is your own infirmity. Once you are well enough to rise neither lock or bar stands between you and freedom."
The boy can't help the quick glance to the door the old man came through. He's smiling when the boy looks back at him.
"Oh, yes. Whenever you have the strength to rise and to walk, you may do so. I will not stand in your way. Though you will find, is you choose to stay, that I can be as much service to you as you to me. Don't scoff or spurn that which may have value, boy," he admonishes lightly. "You are far from a position to do so. For what I wish of you, well… In payment for what I have done already, I think a name would make an excellent start."
The old man stares. The boy blinks. A name? The old fool wants his name? The boy almost laughs. After all the possibilities and their varying degrees of awfulness, a name seems almost a joke. A realization makes the laugh die in his throat, though.
He can't remember his name.
He's had no need of a name in years, no one to trade words with beyond shouted insults and threats. What need of a name for a homeless, friendless thief such as himself? None. The closest to a name he has had in years is itja, and that is not who he is but what he is.
Once he'd had a name. He is sure he did, once. But that was back in the time before, before the night of screams. It was before he had been made to be homeless, friendless; before his family had been stolen, turning him into a thief.
The boy automatically shies from the distant memories. They are hazy, hard to hold on to, and cause an aching pain if held too closely. He has avoided them for so long, it is best to leave them be…
But a name. A name that is his. How long had it been forgotten, and he never noticed?
Acting against his instincts, the boy concentrates on the past, beyond the night of flickering lights and cold shadows, to when…
Just a boy. So young, and content to play with simple toys in the dust. A woman's face, and a man's, both thin, dry, but smiling. At him, at each other. They say soft words he cannot make out, do familiar things he cannot remember. Sometimes they look at him and say a word, a word that is special, means only him. He strains, trying to hear it across the years, bring it back through the bad night…
"… Bakhura."
The old man smiles, pleased. "Bakhura. I will remember it. Mine is Iumeri. Please remember it, even if you never use it."
The boy nods, still a little giddy from the rediscovery of his name after so many years. "Iumeri. The scribe."
"Disgraced scribe," Iumeri corrects, raising a finger. "Once I was a part, a small part, of Pharaoh's household. Oh, yes. I have since been ejected from that coveted seat."
Bakhura raises his brows at the old man. "Disgraced, eh? Whose wife did you diddle?"
Iumeri snorts, casting a glare the boy's way. "Do I look as though I am given much to that kind of sporting, khered? No," he holds up a hand, stemming any reply. "Do not answer that, it would doubtless only be a crude remark. The reason for my disgrace, well. You may well find some points of interest, there."
He shifts in his stool, adjusting the lay of the wrap around his shoulders. He really is old, Bakhura realizes. His large frame, even wizened as it is, gives an impression of strength, of vitality. But as he moves, Bakhura can see that any strength of his youth has long passed, and he is as any reed-slender old man seen on the streets in Dendera. His hands tremble a little as they grab at the edges of his wrap, his fingers thick and clumsy. He moves slowly, with the caution of the elderly lest he damage himself with his movements. And the wrap itself… it is not so warm in the shadowy room that Bakhura feels any need to kick away the blanket at his feet, but neither is it so cold that he wishes to wrap himself in it. Iumeri does wrap himself, as though warding off a midnight chill.
Even without his promise to allow him to walk out unhindered, Bakhura is certain with his strength returned that he would have no trouble at all leaving whenever he wanted.
"I was a scribe of Pharaoh," Iumeri begins. "And I was dedicated and loyal to his service, as was only correct. As was also only correct, however, my first loyalties lay with Thoth, my true patron, and in whose service I am set the task of recording all that is true, lest it be forgotten and lost. For many years, there had been no contest between these two loyalties, no friction between my duties to Thoth or to Aknamkanon. None, until five years ago."
"You would be too young to remember, khered, but not long ago our great country was at war. We fought a crude, brutish people, but they were strong and possessed of Sutekh's own cleverness. Perhaps foolishly, Aknamkanon sought peace with them, but in their brutish minds there was no room for peace or negotiation, only slaughter and conquest. Five years ago the war had come to a critical point, where we must turn back the invaders or find ourselves their newest victory.
"Pharaoh's brother Aknadin was his advisor, and so he advised, as he always did, that strength was needed to ward off catastrophe. Throughout the war the brothers had argued and bickered over the best course of action, but with doom looming so near, Pharaoh at last listened to what Aknadin had to say.
"Aknadin had translated an ancient text full of powerful and terrible magic. One such magic, he said, would have the power to repel our enemies and save our land and people. Pharaoh knew not the exact form the magic his brother proposed, but he knew the nature of the translated tome. My Pharaoh Aknamkanon with his gentle heart, he knew the kind of price that would have to be paid, but with the jackals at our door, he agreed, and charged Aknadin with the execution of his plan.
"The magic Aknadin intended was one which would create seven mystical items, imbued with power and magic strong enough to turn back the advancing hoard. To create these items, however, would require a sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice, the greater the power. To create these items, Aknadin would have to sacrifice human lives and human souls and bind them to the items themselves. And so he did so. Under Nut's cloak, he took a band of his brother's soldiers to a tiny village and killed every human there.
"The items were created, and our enemies driven back once and for all."
Iumeri sighs, staring off in the distance. "Oh, yes. We won the war, but at a great price. I learned these events, the details of them some time later. It was not easy, though, no. There were few around who were able or willing to speak of it at all. The soldiers who had gone with Aknadin, those who still lived, were all vague on that night, as though they were remembering a dream. It was only through persistence that I was able to piece together any sort of picture. Once I had, I was horrified. I wished to unlearn what I had taken such pains to know, but such is not the way of man."
"I intended, therefore, to record the history of our victory in all of its entirety. It was a terrible one, but if it were forgotten, so too would the sacrifice of those souls. Such was not an option to one dedicated to Thoth.
"Somehow, Aknadin learned of what I knew, of what I intended. He found me, and commanded I still my pen on the history or write a version of his own design. I knew from what I had learned which village it was that had given up their lives for the creation of the Millennium Items which even now rest in the hands of those Pharaoh trusts the most. I know, too, that this village was a poor one, struggling as best it could in the hills. It was a village of innocents - for innocents make for a greater sacrifice and stronger magic.
"But my Lord Aknadin, in his version, would have it be so there would be no mention of how the village contributed to the salvation of our land. He would have it said only that the village had done its part, which was more than could be expected from a village of thieves. Thieves! An entire village sacrificed, without whom all our land would be lost, and how would my Lord Aknadin have them forever remembered? As thieves.
"My loyalty to Thoth would not allow it, let alone my own sense of what was right. I refused, and I was cast out by Aknadin, disgraced so none but the most menial of tasks would ever be entrusted to me again. He said it was to protect his brother's gentle heart, but I know it was to protect his own skin. Oh, yes, that it was."
Iumeri tilts his head, eyes fixing on Bakhura with that same hunting bird intensity. "Can you guess which village it was as was struck? I did not tell Aknadin all. I did not tell him of the one soldier who remembered a certain fragment of that night. Who saw, perhaps, one lone figure, nothing more than a child, escape into the dark. He did not pursue, because his sickened heart could take no more. He remembered this because the child's hair shone white in the moonlight. White hair. A strange feature shared by many in that doomed village. In Kul Elna."
Memories swirl in Bakhura's mind, set in motion by Iumeri's words. He knows he ought to feel something; anger perhaps, or grief, but there is nothing. He is numb to all feeling, and he can only stare at Iumeri, as blank of face as he is of emotion.
"When I heard rumors of a young thief with white hair, I followed them," Iumeri goes on quietly. "The possibility that this child would be the same one that soldier had let escape years ago was remote, the chance that he had survived on his own for so long too much to even hope for, but it was a possibility. And the Gods, if your face tells truth of your thoughts, have granted me that remote possibility."
Bakhura's throat feels dry again, and he wishes he could reach for the water, but he feels frozen in place as Iumeri's words slowly begin to take hold.
That night, those men, they had been Pharaoh's men, he had known that. He hadn't known it was the Pharaoh's brother who had led them, and that hardly mattered. Whether the 'gentle hearted' Pharaoh knew or not didn't matter when it was by his word that his village died. What he hadn't known was why his village had been killed. All for some items, the… Millennium Items. Items of magic which still held the souls of those who had been killed.
Bakhura wonders where those items are now.
"So you found me," Bakhura says, his tongue cleaving the roof of his mouth again. "What do you want, iawi rehew?"
Rather than answer, the old man throws back his head and laughs a wild, uncontrollable laugh. "Ah, Thoth!" He shouts to the air. "You have not abandoned your faithful! You lead my steps, oh yes, and reward my quest for truth with the very one who can give it!"
The laughter and the ranting goes on for some time, long enough that the boy begins to wonder if he should try to make Iumeri stop before he injures himself. But the old man stops himself, all at once, and now the eyes fixed on him are flashing with victory, not searching intensity.
"What I want, khered, is what I have always wanted, oh yes. Truth. Absolute truth of what passed on that night and of the people of Kul Elna. For this, I am willing to trade something of equal value."
The offer snaps at Bakhura's attention, even as the words 'absolute truth' clangs warnings in his head. He narrows his eyes. "And what could that be?"
"Knowledge for knowledge. Tell me the truth of these things, and I will teach you the ways of the scribe. I will teach you to read and to write so no writings will be secret to you. I will be your Thoth."
Bakhura almost laughs in his turn, but tiredness is beginning to make things difficult. "What use of I of a scribbler's tricks?"
"More than you might know," the disgraced scribe says. "And beside the exchange of knowledge, we might both keep each other alive better than we would alone. I am an old man," he says, stating the obvious, "and I cannot always afford what I need to make my living, or to fill my belly. Nor do I have the skill or speed to take what I need unnoticed…"
"You found a thief to thieve for you."
Iumeri smiles and Bakhura notices just how knowing it is. "Who better? I cannot thieve so well as you, and you… Well. That mane of yours makes you very recognizable, and with the scar you will doubtless have on your face, you will be even easier to spot. With my help, we may disguise you so you are not so easily picked out. Though first we must leave Dendera…"
"Tcha!" Bakhura scoffs. "I can do this without you, iawi rehew. Why do I need you?"
Iumeri's eyes flash, his smile gets sharper. "You have escaped the fate of your village for five years, Bakhura, survived only because none knew of you. But I have found you, and I am not the only one who knows white hair was common in Kul Elna. Do you think, if your fame grows too much, and whispers of a boy with white hair reaches Aknadin's ear, your life will be worth any more than lotus petals?"
Bakhura thinks on this. He still thinks he can do fine without the ancient watching over him, but the mention of Aknadin gives him another idea.
"You lived near to Pharaoh and those close to him, yes?"
Iumeri's face shutters at the abrupt question. "Yes…"
"You know the habits of Pharaoh and his brother, the defenses they have, the structure of their palaces?"
"Not extensively, but yes."
"That." Bakhura says, pointing a finger at the aged brow. "That knowledge is what I wish. With that I may avenge the death of Kul Elna and put to rest the hungry ghosts. Tell me these things, iawi rehew, or I will leave you to starve when there are none who wish a scribbling from a disgraced, ancient scribe."
Iumeri remains silent for some time, his bright, flashing eyes gone hard as pebbles in his seamed old face. For a time Bakhura thinks he might refuse, and now he has decided on something he wants from the old man, he worries he has gone too far. The knowledge in his shriveled brain would help in the wild, half-formed notion taking shape in Bakhura's head. He must say yes.
At last Iumeri murmurs, almost to himself, "'To teach one must first know the nature of whom one is teaching,' yes. And now I know that nature. Oh, yes."
The old man rubs a hand over his face, and then nods. "Such knowledge you shall have, boy. But first, sleep. If you die, then it matters not your plans for vengeance, because Kul Elna will truly be dead, and remembered only as thieves."
A grin stretches across Bakhura's face, a strange, dizzying elation shooting through his chest.
"I am the last of a dead village, Iumeri. Kul Elna is thieves."
…
A/N2: A whole chapter in ancient Egypt. We're back with Ryou next chapter. Also, say hello to our one recurring OC, Iumeri!
Menhet: The second month of the season of Inundation (Akhet).
Khered: Meaning 'child.'
Iawi: Meaning 'old.'
Rehew: Meaning 'man.'
(Keep in mind, my cobbling together of the ancient Egyptian phrases is haphazard at best, and probably nowhere near accurate.)
Kul Elna: I have severe doubts that Kul Elna was actually a town of thieves, for several reasons that I won't get into, (rant on the horizon, seriously), but probably the most notable one is that we have an unreliable narrator(s) telling us that Kul Elna was populated with thieves. Aknadin had good reasons to make the people of Kul Elna as unsympathetic as possible, so the soldiers would do what they were told without protesting (and they were still enjoying the mass murder, seriously how does anyone see these people as anything but monsters, argh). Anyway, without going completely off the handle, this is my interpretation, if you want to believe that Kul Elna was actually full of thieves like how our lovely, manipulative, mass murdering Aknadin tells us, that's fine, too. (…I have a lot of feelings on this subject…)
Bakhura: So I'm going with the name 'Bakhura' instead of 'Akefia' or anything else for the Thief King. Why? Well, I was going to go with Akefia, until some beautiful person on deviantART pointed me in the direction of a little meta article a fan put together about TK's name. It's full of good stuff, and I recommend giving it a read. Just search 'Nomenclature by Fictatious' and it should pop right up. (Also, hurray! 'The boy' finally has a name!)
Bakhura's Age: For those keeping track at home, Bakhura was five at the time of the Kul Elna massacre, it's been another five years, so he's ten as of this chapter.
Scribes: The role of a scribe in ancient Egypt was a highly honored one, as might be expected. To be literate was a huge deal, and not everyone got the opportunity. Normally it was restricted to the sons (and sometimes daughters) of scribes, or to those children whose family could afford to send them to the schools to learn for four or five years. Scribes held a very high social status on their own, whether or not they were a part of Pharaoh's court, but even they could fall on hard times.
The next chapter officially takes us into the realm of canon continuity. Prepare yourselves; we're going to be meeting the rest of the Yu-Gi-Oh main cast!
Thanks for reading, everyone, and see you on the 5th of July!
